Enflame not working as described

[Uun]

I have Enflame on my lvl 50 blaster (it was my lvl 49 pick). The in-game power description indicates that it should do 8 ticks of 13.58 fire damage 6 times, or a total of 48 ticks for 651.84 damage. I believe this is an enhanced figure but doesn't believe it includes damage buffs. The power has 117% in slotted damage enhancements (including alpha slot), and my build has another 37% in damage buffs. The power has 64% in slotted accuracy and my build has another 40% in accuracy buffs. 

 

I tested against a lvl 50 Nemesis Colonel and a lvl 50 Posessed Scientist in PI. The Colonel has no resistance to fire damage. The Scientist has 10% resistance if its frozen armor is active (forgot to track if it was). I've got a +1 incarnate shift but no debuffs were in play. I know that Enflame summons a pseudo-pet and tracked via a separate combat log looking only at pet damage and tohit. Against the Colonel the pet had 9 separate tohit checks - 8 of these showed a 95% chance to hit but 1 showed 80%. I got hits on 6 of the 9. I got (in order): 5 ticks of 9.5 fire damage, 1 tick of 6.93, 1 tick of 9.5, 1 tick of 6.93, 11 ticks of 9.5 and 2 ticks of 8.81 for a total of 21 ticks for 192.98 damage. Against the Scientist the pet had 8 separate tohit checks - 7 of these showed a 95% chance to hit but 1 showed 80%. I got hits on 6 of the 8. I got 3 ticks of 8.74 fire damage, 11 ticks of 9.42, 2 ticks of 10.24, 1 tick of 7.67, 1 tick of 10.24, 1 tick of 7.67, 2 ticks of 10.24 and 10 ticks of 9.5 for a total of 31 ticks for 291.38 damage. 

 

I can't figure out how the game is calculating the damage or tohit values, but they clearly aren't being applied in 6 increments of 8 ticks each. Not sure if the pet is ignoring enhancement values or ignoring incarnate and IO buffs, but it looks like it's one of the two. I can understand why the pet would do periodic tohit checks against mobs in the AoE, but not sure why it would continue to check against the foe the power was attached to. Once the power is applied and passes the initial tohit check, the foe the power is attached to should receive all ticks of damage.

[Trickshooter]

I'm not at home to check everything, but I think you may be misunderstanding how it works a bit.

 

Enflame summons 6 separate pseudopets, each 3 seconds after the other at the current location of the initial target. This is to give the illusion of it being a "trail" of flames. Each pseudopet does 8 ticks of damage to enemies standing in it. If no one is standing in the flames, they won't make any tohit checks, and so won't do any damage.

 

As for the fluctuating tohit and damage, I can't really say right now. I'll try and remember to research it later. 

[Uun]

1 hour ago, Trickshooter said:

I'm not at home to check everything, but I think you may be misunderstanding how it works a bit.

 

Enflame summons 6 separate pseudopets, each 3 seconds after the other at the current location of the initial target. This is to give the illusion of it being a "trail" of flames. Each pseudopet does 8 ticks of damage to enemies standing in it. If no one is standing in the flames, they won't make any tohit checks, and so won't do any damage.

 

As for the fluctuating tohit and damage, I can't really say right now. I'll try and remember to research it later. 

I didn't realize there were 6 separate pseudo-pets, but that makes total sense in light of the power description. Is each pseudo-pet supposed to make a single to-hit check and then apply 8 ticks of damage to each foe it hits? If that's the case, I would expect to see 6 to-hit checks (if there was only one foe in range), not 8 or 9. I'm clearly not getting the correct number of ticks of damage and the amount of damage per tick is a fraction of what the game says it should be in the power description. 

[siolfir]

15 minutes ago, Uun said:

I didn't realize there were 6 separate pseudo-pets, but that makes total sense in light of the power description. Is each pseudo-pet supposed to make a single to-hit check and then apply 8 ticks of damage to each foe it hits? If that's the case, I would expect to see 6 to-hit checks (if there was only one foe in range), not 8 or 9. I'm clearly not getting the correct number of ticks of damage and the amount of damage per tick is a fraction of what the game says it should be in the power description. 

I would expect that the to-hit checks would work like "rain" powers such as Rain of Fire, Ice Storm, or Whirlpool. If that is the case it does a to-hit check against mobs in the area of effect up until the target cap each time the power activates - the information would appear the same either way: Rain of Fire says 76 ticks of damage, but it's not one check for all 76 ticks.

[Trickshooter]

1 hour ago, Uun said:

I didn't realize there were 6 separate pseudo-pets, but that makes total sense in light of the power description. Is each pseudo-pet supposed to make a single to-hit check and then apply 8 ticks of damage to each foe it hits? If that's the case, I would expect to see 6 to-hit checks (if there was only one foe in range), not 8 or 9. I'm clearly not getting the correct number of ticks of damage and the amount of damage per tick is a fraction of what the game says it should be in the power description. 

Based on similar pets, it's likely that it doesn't really do "8 ticks of damage". Precedent established by similar powers would say each pet has an auto power that continuously rolls a to-hit check to do damage if someone is in range and can make up to 8 ticks over the lifetime of the pet, which is 5 seconds per pet, if someone is standing in one of them for the full lifetime. But it's possible server timing could make it do less ticks than that, as well. And if your target is continuously moving and getting out of range of the pet before it can make its first to-hit check, it may not have a chance to do any damage at all.

 

But this is all conjecture until I can verify some stuff at home.

Edited January 22, 2020 by Trickshooter

[Redlynne]

Sounds like you want to Immobilize your $Target (Entangling Arrow?) and then "light 'em up!" with Enflame to determine how many damage ticks you get.  That way you can ensure they aren't feared/running away from the damage they're receiving and all the pseudopets ought to be dropping on top of each other.

[Uun]

45 minutes ago, Redlynne said:

Sounds like you want to Immobilize your $Target (Entangling Arrow?) and then "light 'em up!" with Enflame to determine how many damage ticks you get.  That way you can ensure they aren't feared/running away from the damage they're receiving and all the pseudopets ought to be dropping on top of each other.

That's basically what I did (Time Wall), although that may be responsible for some of the variation in damage due to Defiance.