Spells: Flash of Light

[Aeolwind]

Originally Posted by guineapig [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

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?

[guineapig]

Originally Posted by Halladar [You must be logged in to view images. Log in or Register.]

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]

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