Abnormal fizzle rate at 40.

[Galacticus]

Just reached level 40 along with a shaman buddy of mine. We have both noticed that we are fizzling a shit load now. I can easily be at 90% mana, be ready to pull, and go to cast a fire shield on my pet and fizzle to about 60%.

By the time I would med back up to 90 to engage the mob, the fire shield would wear off.

We have tested this on low level spells as well as ones we got at 39. My see invisibility spell I got at 16 is fizzling way more then it did from 16-39. My skill is around 100 in divination.

Thought it was appropriate to report.

[Bockscar]

You'll fizzle more as you level up if your relevant casting skills don't increase at the same rate. I don't know if there's some extra breakpoint at 40, but I expect it's more a matter of perception. 100 divination is around max at level 20, but it's only half of your max at level 40. If you've leveled too fast for casting skills to follow, which is easy with 10x XP and skills like abjuration that don't get used constantly, then that's why you fizzle more the higher level you get. Especially if you then try to use higher-level spells that you gain as you level.

[Lasher]

hard numbers would be beneficial here. Look through your logs and gather info for other lvls

60% fizzle is this out of a sample size of 10,20,100 casts? Sometimes you just get unlucky. I had gate become unstable for me twice before. Not saying there is not a problem but if you get a chance you should give more information

[jilena]

I thought the way casting skills worked was that your skill had to be relevant to the level you got the spell. I.e. enchanter gets invis at 1 but shaman doesn't get til 29. Enchanter would only need 10 in divination to have a 90% or whatever chance to cast whereas a shaman would need to have 150 in divination to have the same chance to cast.

I remember this being an issue in kunark when shaman and druids got superior heal because they were more likely to fizzle it than a cleric who got it at level 34.

That said I have noticed some abnormal fizzles for me also. Fizzling dots 3 times in a row, heals three times in a row, canni three times in a row, with maxed skills at 50. *shrug*

[pickled_heretic]

the fizzle rate on the blue server has always seemed unusually high to me but i never had hard data so i never bothered to do anything but grumble about it in groups here and there.

[jilena]

It's weird. My experience on p99 (blue) was that spells where I had shitty skill level would fizzle way less than live. But it felt like spells that I had reasonable skill in would fizzle more. If that makes sense.

[pickled_heretic]

It's weird. My experience on p99 (blue) was that spells where I had shitty skill level would fizzle way less than live. But it felt like spells that I had reasonable skill in would fizzle more. If that makes sense.

that's pretty much my exact same observation. fizzle rates were too low when you had no skill, too high when you were proficient. but like i said, any time you post something without evidence you get trolled into oblivion and i don't really care that much since you can just macro every spell so everything casts anyway regardless of fizzles.

[Galacticus]

Grabbing some screenshots when server is back up

[Mardur]

It depends on the spell too. For example, the Cannibalize series probably had the highest fizzle rate on Live than any other spell (which was okay considering they don't cost mana). It was nothing more than a mere inconvenience; most shaman would create a hotkey that would /cast Cannibalize multiple times so that you only had to press 1 button even with the abnormally high fizzle rate. Cannibalize fizzles significantly less here. It was completely normal to have streaks of 5+ fizzles with maxed spell schools including Specialization casting Cannibalize 4 at level 60.

[jilena]

Well Canni 4 would obviously fizzle a lot based on what I was saying before. The higher level you get the spell the less of a "gap" between your skill rating and the rating required for the skill you have. Canni IV is a level 58 spell. At 60 your skill cap hasn't changed making it 235 I think (the same as 50) whereas to be on "par" for canni you would need a skill of 295. You just notice the fizzles a fuckton on canni cuz you spam it whereas you don't with other spells.

Like my example before. For a cleric, superior heal is a level 34 spell. So your skill to be on par for it would need to be 175 and at 50 your skill cap is 235 (at 60 also) so as you are 60 points over par your fizzle rate should be next to nothing. But for a shaman who gets superior heal at 53 their skill would need to be 270 to be on par for the cast but as the cap is 235 they fall 35 points below par and thus fizzle it more frequently than a cleric would.

I would wager if you cast canni 1 at 60 you would almost never fizzle it.

I also think it's sorta percentage based, i.e. casting a spell that you would need 50 skill to cast when you have 20 skill vs a spell you need 250 skill and you have 220 skill in, the 50 skill would fizzle way more as you have a difference of 60 percent vs a difference of only 12 percent. Does that make sense?

I am not sure if this is how it works on p1999 but I think this is how it worked on live.

[Mardur]

Even Canni 1 would fizzle a fuck ton. It was built into the spell as far as I know, no other explanation. I've never heard of the level of the spell affecting fizzle rates thing before, but who the fuck knows.

[Brinkman]

Fizzles are pretty simple in everquest. I am still confused why so many people dont understand this system. Here is a post the man himself GZ :

FIZZLE RATES

This is a post by Geoffrey Zatkin, the primary programmer for the spells and magic section of Everquest, Explaining the chance to fizzle for wizards ( this is unifirm to all pure casters, just replace wisdom for int when applicable.


There is always a 5% chance of succeeding (regardless of how low your appropriate skill is) and a 5% chance of failure (regardless of how high your appropriate skill is). What modifies the chance to fizzle check is the appropriate skill (Abjuration, Evocation, etc.), your Wizard's Intelligence and the level of the spell. Spells have a toughness rating ( Toughness is known in the SPDAT files as " fizzle rate" ), so that some are less difficult to cast than others. According to GZ, none are more difficult than the average to cast.

When you gain a new rank of spells, any spell that you cast of that rank has a 20% chance of fizzling. This is adjusted by your skill and INT, and the toughness rating of the spell. If your INT is greater than 75, the chance of fizzle is reduced by 1% for every point of your statistic above 75. Each spell assumes that you have a skill equal to (5 * level you got the spell). A Wizard getting Bind Affinity (a Wizard gets Bind affinity at level 12, so 5 * 12 =60) would have that spell assuming that he had a 60 Alteration skill for purposes of casting. With a 60 skill in Alteration (the appropriate skill) and a 75 intelligence, our wizard would have an 80% chance of successfully casting Bind Affinity. For every skill point in abjuration that our Wizard has above 60, the percent chance of fizzling goes down by 1%, to a minimum of a 5% chance of fizzling.

Thus, three levels (15 skill points) after our Wizard gets Bind Affinity, he will be able to max out Alteration for that spell, and have a mere 5% chance of fizzling the spell. Higher Intelligence will also help with this.

Basically what this is saying is: Three levels after you get a spell, if you max out your skill in that spells casting type, you have a 5% fizzle chance in general, unless the "toughness" rating is lowered, which makes some spells easier to cast, no spells are harder.

Specialize will lower your fizzle chance a bit as well 1% lower fail rate per 50 skill in eah specialty. So basically if you are max spec in evocation(200) and max in evocation and casting an evocation spell 3 lvls or lower, you should have only a 1% chance to fizzle.

I firmly beleive that something is incorrect in the fizzle code on P99.

Knowing all of this... here is a post by Uthgaard from 7-22-11 ... Has this been applied yet?
There was an additional, unnecessary level of difficulty that was subjectively added to the checks, and it was based around hard-coded skill caps that were inaccurate for timeline. This created a higher fizzle rate in the mid-level range, that disappeared as the per-level skill caps approached the hard-coded value. This is fixed, pending update.

[jilena]

That makes sense minus the int part. Every caster worth a fuck has ~200 int which would mean that they would always have a %5 chance of fizzling any spell no matter what their skill. Maybe he typoed it and it was every 5 points would be 1% making 200 int a bonus of 25%?? When was that posted?

Still pretty similar to what I said though surprised it is a direct number value rather than a percentage based on the gap. Interesting either way.

[Brinkman]

This was posted in late 1999 prior to kunark, the devs started talking to website owners such as Baelish and Graffe. I beleive this was posted in response to a question by graffe, who ran the major wizard site back in the classic days.

The int/wis part of it was always tricky. It did in fact play a part, but it was small. It's possible it was a typo and he meant to say .1% instead of 1%. Fizzles are capped at 95% success rate based solely on the lvl of the spell vs your skill. Int/wis wouldnt push you past that cap, but it did lower your fizzle rate if you were not max skill.