Lightning Rod (Tanker version) has a chance to fail

[GM Impervium]

Issue: A user sent in a ticket about a month ago about how the power Lightning Rod (from Electric Melee) would occasionally not hit any opponents. It's not that it was missing the opponents, but it was literally not making any attack rolls after teleporting the character. We've actually had a few tickets on this since late January of last year, around the same time we rolled out the Tanker changes. The issue seems to affect Shield Charge and Savage Leap, as well.

Testing/Reproducing: Simply using the Lightning Rod power on groups of enemies enough will have this happen eventually. It does not fail every time, roughly 10% of the time, though it can occasionally happen twice in a row. Testing was done on low-level gray-con mobs, as well as even con mobs. There is no "miss" indicator over the enemies' heads, and the combat log does not mention the power attempting to attack.

Here are some items of note we discovered while testing:

1) The bug is apparently random, with no sure-fire way to reproduce it.

2) User lag/latency does not seem to be the issue.

3) The character is still teleported, and the visual/audio FX still play. It's just that the attack rolls are never made.
4) This only happens to the Tanker version of Lightning Rod and similar powers. Other AT versions of these abilities are unaffected.
5) This bug does NOT occur on the Test server, only the Live ones. This has made independently verifying the bug difficult, though I did watch the character in question try and fail multiple times to strike foes with this attack.

6) Slotting does not seem to make a difference. No matter what, if any, enhancements were slotted into the power or character, the bug continues to occur.

Other: I am posting here in hopes of collecting additional feedback and data on this issue. If anyone using the Electric Melee, Savage Melee, or Shield Defense powersets (especially on a Tanker) have any info they can add to this, please do so.

[Bopper]

40 minutes ago, GM Impervium said:

Issue: A user sent in a ticket about a month ago about how the power Lightning Rod (from Electric Melee) would occasionally not hit any opponents. It's not that it was missing the opponents, but it was literally not making any attack rolls after teleporting the character. We've actually had a few tickets on this since late January of last year, around the same time we rolled out the Tanker changes. The issue seems to affect Shield Charge and Savage Leap, as well.

Testing/Reproducing: Simply using the Lightning Rod power on groups of enemies enough will have this happen eventually. It does not fail every time, roughly 10% of the time, though it can occasionally happen twice in a row. Testing was done on low-level gray-con mobs, as well as even con mobs. There is no "miss" indicator over the enemies' heads, and the combat log does not mention the power attempting to attack.

Here are some items of note we discovered while testing:

1) The bug is apparently random, with no sure-fire way to reproduce it.

2) User lag/latency does not seem to be the issue.

3) The character is still teleported, and the visual/audio FX still play. It's just that the attack rolls are never made.
4) This only happens to the Tanker version of Lightning Rod and similar powers. Other AT versions of these abilities are unaffected.
5) This bug does NOT occur on the Test server, only the Live ones. This has made independently verifying the bug difficult, though I did watch the character in question try and fail multiple times to strike foes with this attack.

6) Slotting does not seem to make a difference. No matter what, if any, enhancements were slotted into the power or character, the bug continues to occur.

Other: I am posting here in hopes of collecting additional feedback and data on this issue. If anyone using the Electric Melee, Savage Melee, or Shield Defense powersets (especially on a Tanker) have any info they can add to this, please do so.

I only did a quick glance at the power data, but didn't notice any obvious difference between Tanler Shield Charges and other Shield Charges. I did want to ask a question though before I look more into it later.

 

Have you tested to see if there is a difference in results based on if you cast Shield Charge as a location selection versus if you cast it using Powexeclocation target macros?

[GM Impervium]

The power was being tested without the use of macros. I'll put that up as a possible point of investigation, though!

[Cutter]

I use the "powexec_location target" macro on Shield/Elec and Dark/Elec tanks, and have observed this no-hit behaviour on both of them, and with both Shield Charge and Lightning Rod. From memory tho it feels like I've noticed it happen more often with Lightning Rod. I'd have to find an hour or so to run each of them around a hazard zone and try various power execution methods and distances.

[RobotLove]

Were you stationary or moving at the time of activation durring testing?

[Cutter]

11 hours ago, RobotLove said:

Were you stationary or moving at the time of activation durring testing?

Usually moving, occasionally immediately after jumping in/landing. I'll see if I notice any differences.

[nihilii]

14 hours ago, GM Impervium said:

It does not fail every time, roughly 10% of the time, though it can occasionally happen twice in a row. Testing was done on low-level gray-con mobs, as well as even con mobs. There is no "miss" indicator over the enemies' heads, and the combat log does not mention the power attempting to attack.

This might be slightly offtopic, but I've noticed the exact same thing on a Scrapper using (Dark Melee) Siphon Life. The occurence is thankfully much lower than 10% of the time, rather somewhere in the 0.1% to 1% range.

There's a slight difference in that the animation plays, but no audio FX. But everything else checks out - no combat roll, seemingly random, happens on any kind of mob.

[Bay]

Minor necroposting since I've just started playing a Bio/Elec Tank and noticed this issue. I did some asking around and minor (amateur) testing to come up with the following.

 

Confirming that there is zero ToHit roll when the issue occurs. Tested while standing still using both manual placement and powexeclocation target macro. Consensus of those participating in the discussion was that, somehow, the pseudo-pet was being spawned beneath the map instead of on the functional surface of the map. All tests were done in Perez Park, against Skulls standing on the sidewalk and street hoping that the flat surface would remove geometry deviations.

 

Best suggestion/idea I can come up with would be to somehow adjust the hitbox targeting, if that's even a thing, of the pseudo-pet. Maybe a way to target a mob's upper hitbox (head) but animate to the feet?

 

I have a crazy idea to test and will edit to report back findings.

 

[Edit] Just ran through Perez testing against Hellions. Out of 50 uses of Tank Lightning Rod, all 50 successfully rolled ToHit and landed. I used "powexeclocation u:2" on all 50 uses. Not sure how conclusive it works out to be, but it looks to me like the pseudo-pet is, in fact, spawning under the map on occasion, thus preventing it from doing anything.

Edited July 16, 2021 by Bay

[LQT]

Ran around DA on a Bio/Elec Tank for a bit. Have LR set up to use in 3/4 different wants.

 

1. Manual placement of power marker.

2. Location_target macro activated through m3 key.

3. Location_me macro activated through Shift+T keys to mimic my Blast set t9s/Nukes.

 

3.5 Mouse keys Shift+m3 for quick manual placement without having to click the actual action bar.

 

Results of running around LR'ing DA mobs:

1, 2, and 3.5 all would miss at times. 3 didn't and differs from the other situations in that combat has already started however brief. So maybe Gauntlet is doing something funky or something else Tank only before combat starts but for now didn't get very far because as mentioned it's difficult to replicate the bug.

 

[Bay]

I've attached two screenshots taken from the City of Data website that shows an interesting difference between Scrapper and Tanker Lightning Rod. I looked at Shield Defense on both AT's and noticed they looked the same and figured that there might be something to it. However, I have no understanding of where the information for City of Data comes from or how it is extracted, so not entirely sure if this is a viable source of information for identifying the issue. Specifically, the Tanker listing is lacking the 'Create Entity' line that is present in all the others. Assuming this information is not manually entered and is extracted directly from the game, is it possible that this could somehow be the source of the issue?

 

For reference:
Scrapper Lightning Rod

Tanker Lightning Rod

[aethereal]

You mean the "embraced lightning rod" thing?  I think that has to do with Fiery Embrace.

[Bay]

22 minutes ago, aethereal said:

You mean the "embraced lightning rod" thing?  I think that has to do with Fiery Embrace.

Nope. The part above that about creating Pets_Lightning_Rod_Scrapper. Shield Defense has that line in the Tanker entry, but not in the Elec Melee one.

[Outrider_01]

On 2/25/2021 at 5:09 PM, GM Impervium said:

Other: I am posting here in hopes of collecting additional feedback and data on this issue. If anyone using the Electric Melee, Savage Melee, or Shield Defense powersets (especially on a Tanker) have any info they can add to this, please do so.

So I have a Savage Melee / Fire brute for farming, but I don't notice a miss.  Everything hits everytime as far as I can tell, but then again the dots are flying so its hard to notice.  

 

My Savage/Electric brute was slaughtering Rikti Monkeys in PI, didn't notice a miss with no check of flying text saying deflect/miss ect.

 

My to hit rolls

 [11:03] HIT Vicious Rikti Monkey! Your Savage Leap power is autohit. (is that teleport)
[11:03] MISSED Vicious Rikti Monkey!! Your Savage Leap AoE power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 98.74.
[11:03] HIT Vicious Rikti Monkey! Your Savage Leap AoE power was forced to hit by streakbreaker. (good or bad?)
[11:03] HIT Vicious Rikti Monkey! Your Savage Leap AoE power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 84.09.
[11:03] HIT Vicious Rikti Monkey! Your Savage Leap AoE power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 68.42.
[11:03] HIT Vicious Rikti Monkey! Your Savage Leap AoE power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 75.70.
[11:03] HIT Vicious Rikti Monkey! Your Savage Leap AoE power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 28.91.
[11:03] HIT Vicious Rikti Monkey! Your Savage Leap AoE power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 27.89.
[11:03] HIT Vicious Rikti Monkey! Your Savage Leap AoE power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 48.18.
[11:03] HIT Vicious Rikti Monkey! Your Savage Leap AoE power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 83.82.

 

Not heavy testing, but on brutes I don't think its ever really failed aside from bad rolls.  Maybe once or twice, but it feels like a biased confirmation it might of done nothing or a confused suspect picked out of the line up 

[Veracor]

I am noticing that people testing this have not reported any missing hit checks when using Lightning Rod where they already are, and also that when Lightning Rod is used where the source and destinations do not intersect are the cases where it can fail.  I am also noticing that people are replicating the problem on Homecoming/busy mapservers, while not having the problem on Test/non-busy mapservers.  Given that the Tanker version of this power is implemented differently than the other three ATs for some reason, this suggests to me that this is an issue with server tick rate, or at least rounding on small time values, resulting in seemingly-random fails.

 

The correctly-working versions (Brute, Scrapper, Stalker) do two things: they apply a teleport effect on you and they also create a pseudopet at the location that fires the Lightning Rod explosion, with the teleport and explosion lining up using a small delay (0.125 seconds) between the two.

 

The Tanker version does something different: instead of creating a pseudopet, it applies the teleport effect on you and then the explosion off of you after the same delay of 0.125 seconds.  In "failed" cases of this power's usage, the teleport and the explosion may very well be taking place within the same window and thus triggering the explosion's hit check at the location you teleported from, rather than to.

 

Now ArcanaTime is a funky thing so busy mapservers like DA or Homecoming in general might result in fails due to the window of time being wider, while non-busy mapservers like Perez or the Test server would work more consistently.  This same-frame timing issue applies to the Brute/Scrapper/Stalker versions too, but since the pseudopet is told at the start of the power to be created at the destination, it doesn't matter.  Regardless of the real reason, the cause of the problem is that the Tanker's version was simply implemented in a different fashion for whatever reason.  If the Tanker version of Lightning Rod were changed to use the pseudopet method that the other three ATs do, it would likely fix all fail cases despite the same-frame issue still technically happening.

 

---

 

(And to directly address the theory that it is being targetted under the ground: (1) the Tanker version doesn't spawn any pseudopet at all, and (2) being under one-sided surfaces doesn't invalidate line-of-sight or hit checks, only collision (and most ground in this game is one-sided).  The Lightning Rod pseudopet itself fires its explosion instantly and is permanently flying, so it can't fall into the void and fail a hit check that way either)

Edited November 26, 2021 by Veracor

[LQT]

Just had this miss on a Bio/Elec tank so it's still about in some form. Used a "powexec_location target" macro bound to Shift+m4 and despite landing right in the middle of the group the full effect of the power was to hit 1 mob:

Personal log info

[21:20:31] You activated the Lightning Rod power.
[21:20:33] HIT Galaxy Adjutant! Your Lightning Rod power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 19.41.
[21:20:33] You hit Galaxy Adjutant with your Lightning Rod for 490.7 points of Energy damage.
[21:20:33] You knock Galaxy Adjutant off their feet with your Lightning Rod!
[21:20:33] You hit Galaxy Adjutant with your Armageddon: Chance for Fire Damage for 107.08 points of Fire damage.
[21:20:33] You hit Galaxy Adjutant with your Offensive Adaptation for 0.72 points of Toxic damage.
[21:20:36] You activated the Lightning Clap power.

Full log info
 

Spoiler

[21:20:31] You activated the Lightning Rod power.
[21:20:33] Vortex Cor Leonis Force MISSES! Chain Gun power had a 26.99% chance to hit, but rolled a 45.87.
[21:20:33] HIT Galaxy Adjutant! Your Lightning Rod power had a 95.00% chance to hit, you rolled a 19.41.
[21:20:33] You hit Galaxy Adjutant with your Lightning Rod for 490.7 points of Energy damage.
[21:20:33] You knock Galaxy Adjutant off their feet with your Lightning Rod!
[21:20:33] You hit Galaxy Adjutant with your Armageddon: Chance for Fire Damage for 107.08 points of Fire damage.
[21:20:33] You hit Galaxy Adjutant with your Offensive Adaptation for 0.72 points of Toxic damage.
[21:20:35] Vortex Cor Leonis Fire MISSES! Flamethrower power had a 12.51% chance to hit, but rolled a 19.33.
[21:20:35] Vortex Cor Leonis Force MISSES! Brawl power had a 5.00% chance to hit, but rolled a 64.28.
[21:20:35] Vortex Cor Leonis Grenade MISSES! Brawl power had a 5.00% chance to hit, but rolled a 70.87.
[21:20:35] Vortex Cor Leonis Grenade MISSES! Brawl power had a 5.00% chance to hit, but rolled a 73.85.
[21:20:35] Vortex Cor Leonis Fire MISSES! Brawl power had a 5.00% chance to hit, but rolled a 23.02.
[21:20:35] Vortex Cor Leonis Grenade HITS you! Brawl power had a 5.00% chance to hit and rolled a 1.28.
[21:20:35] Vortex Cor Leonis Grenade hits you with their Brawl for 43.98 points of Smashing damage.
[21:20:35] Galaxy Adjutant MISSES! Shadow Blast power had a 5.75% chance to hit, but rolled a 58.09.
[21:20:35] Equinox Parasite MISSES! Gloom power had a 5.00% chance to hit, but rolled a 62.84.
[21:20:35] Thunder Strike is recharged.
[21:20:36] Vortex Cor Leonis Fire MISSES! Flamethrower power had a 6.00% chance to hit, but rolled a 80.49.
[21:20:36] Vortex Cor Leonis Fire MISSES! Flamethrower power had a 6.00% chance to hit, but rolled a 90.19.
[21:20:36] You activated the Lightning Clap power.
[21:20:37] Vortex Cor Leonis Force MISSES! Chain Gun power had a 8.99% chance to hit, but rolled a 88.06.
[21:20:37] Ball Lightning is recharged.

This is the group in question:



And this was roughly where I landed after using LR