Something seems off post U59

[Kortar]

From my perspective of this week, I've been seeing a lot less crits then I'm used to doing Heroic quests on low skulls. Didn't feel like the mobs were hitting harder but at that level/difficulty I might not have noticed.

There seems to be something broken with the critical hit confirmation roll. I've been hitting the dummy and here what I got :
(Combat): You roll to confirm a critical on Training Dummy. You roll a 16 (+119): Critical hit resisted!

This seemed to imply that I failed my critical hit confirmation roll, which seems weird based on the roll.
And then on the next hit I passed it with a weaker roll.

(Combat): You roll to confirm a critical on Training Dummy. You roll a 6 (+103): Critical Hit!

It could be that crits that are blocked by fortification are not properly displayed in the combat log, but considering what I've experiencing it seems like there's an issue with this.

 

[DeathTitan]

I know that some mobs bypass fortification entirely (even some non-champion mobs).
I always run with druid in water elemental form with over 300 fortification, often R10 difficulty.

 

[Goldy]

I would like to offer my experience here.

I have specifically noticed "tougher" mobs in Explorer Zones, when you have multiple groups (three or more) of mobs active.
It is almost like the game thinks you are in Dungeon Alert Status, but aren't. Incoming damage which is usually in the single digit and teens explodes to 50, 60, 100s depending on the level of the zone. I can consistently reproduce this, but not every time, I would assume this means there is something else involved here.

Example from Sands

I should have explained this better, my apologizes.

I have seen "tougher" mobs all over the place. If I say every fifth run of Treasure Hunt on the third Tuesday of the month if it is a blue moon some of skeletons start hitting my characters for 75 point of damage, is not very helpful in diagnosing the problem.

What I have noticed in Wilderness Adventure Areas I can on a regular basis get mobs to elevate their to hit and damage, as well as their HP. This to me seems like the same or at least a very similar problem that many of us are experiencing. It takes activating a number of mob groups, but not achieving Dungeon Alert Status.

An example of this is the Windlasher Gnolls in the Sands of Menechtarun Wilderness Adventure Area. In general these mobs due 4 to 12 points of damage using one of their three attacks. In a situation where a number of groups are active at once this damage increases into the 70s and their HP seem to double. It is a double whammy, they do more damage and take more damage to defeat. After a small handful of the Gnolls are defeated this damage returns to normal as do their HP.

To me, this feels like the server thinks Dungeon Alert is active but it is not on the client.

 

[Arcanaverse]

Did a little bit more digging on the DA stuff.

The DA changes weren't apart of a patch, but during maintenance. For a light change like that, I very much believe that they didn't make a major overhaul to the system, but instead adjusted the numbers for the buffs. Which they kind of allude to in the announcement when Tolero was talking about the buffs were already in place, but were leaning more into it. So in other words. If DA is even at fault (and if damage spikes are even an issue), it would've been in the code prior to u59 is my thinking.

Additionally, DA doesn't give monsters more HP. For some enemies (ie bosses) will receive defensive bonuses to make it seem that way though. Which...

@Goldy First off thanks for the continued details. Question, do you see monster hp totals? So like, if you pick an enemy and spawn/reset the instance for that same enemy a bunch of times it'll sometimes have a different hp total?

 

[Zuldar]

Dig a little bit more digging on the DA stuff.

I went into epic cogs and found a mob, they did about 10 damage a hit to me and had about 2900 hp. Had a second person run around to get dungeon alert and at DA 2 they were still doing roughly 10 damage and their hp did not change.

No DA

DA 2

 

[Goldy]

Dig a little bit more digging on the DA stuff.

The DA changes weren't apart of a patch, but during maintenance. For a light change like that, I very much believe that they didn't make a major overhaul to the system, but instead adjusted the numbers for the buffs. Which they kind of allude to in the announcement when Tolero was talking about the buffs were already in place, but were leaning more into it. So in other words. If DA is even at fault (and if damage spikes are even an issue), it would've been in the code prior to u59 is my thinking.

Additionally, DA doesn't give monsters more HP. For some enemies (ie bosses) will receive defensive bonuses to make it seem that way though. Which...

@Goldy First off thanks for the continued details. Question, do you see monster hp totals? So like, if you pick an enemy and spawn/reset the instance for that same enemy a bunch of times it'll sometimes have a different hp total?

I do, however they "are not what they seem."

The Windlasher Gnolls (running solo with level appropriate toon) all have ~92 to 108 HP. I do between 190 and 210 points damage with a non crit. Hitting a Windlasher Gnoll whose HP is listed as 108 with a attack landing 210 points of damage doesn't defeat the gnoll, I still need to do a small additional amount of damage, shield bash for 10 for example, is enough to defeat the Gnoll. This suggest the Gnoll actual has between 211 to 220 HP, double 216 is right in that range.

Where I originally noticed this was on the hardcore server where I do not see the HP, however I do similar amount of damage and see similar results.

 

[The Narc]

I do, however they "are not what they seem."

The Windlasher Gnolls (running solo with level appropriate toon) all have ~92 to 108 HP. I do between 190 and 210 points damage with a non crit. Hitting a Windlasher Gnoll whose HP is listed as 108 with a attack landing 210 points of damage doesn't defeat the gnoll, I still need to do a small additional amount of damage, shield bash for 10 for example, is enough to defeat the Gnoll. This suggest the Gnoll actual has between 211 to 220 HP, double 216 is right in that range.

Where I originally noticed this was on the hardcore server where I do not see the HP, however I do similar amount of damage and see similar results.

This is a shaddy little stealth trick that has been going on for a long time, unless you have absolutely excessive melee or ranged damage. If you add just a little bit more damage they will still survive so that they get one action this is by design from the devs. I have tested it in the past with a naked toon compared to a geared out buffed toon, both still need that one extra hit. All kinds of number fudging to keep the mobs alive for one action.

 

[ForeverZero]

Something has changed. Hunt or be hunted on normal is way more difficult then it has ever been. Same with Dryad on hard. Our raid party guildies and friends we have been playing with for years are all in agreement that especially after the last update that raids have gotten much harder. The lag is the other part of the problem. We were in doj we won then out of the blue her meteor impact wiped most of the group when we were opening the chest. In Hunt which we always win on normal has gotten even worse lag somehow and again mobs and bosses are now super powered and we wiped twice on normal. We had guildies rage quit ddo last night and said they weren't coming back. We are planning on taking time away too from our nightly raid runs. It sucks that are favorite game has become this way especially with all the friends we have made over the years. Nobody wants to work that hard to learn to run most raids just to get nerfed overnight and have your team get that angry. It's not worth my time or $$ if this is the new order of things.

I think a lot of issues many people are seeing now are due to the ranged arc changes, Hunt has a lot of respawning archers that can be a problem, if it's lagging erroneously that could be making them build up their ranged power stacks significantly faster since lag is causing them to not be cc'd/instakilled in time. causing ridiculous levels of damage to players.

I would like to offer my experience here.

I have specifically noticed "tougher" mobs in Explorer Zones, when you have multiple groups (three or more) of mobs active.
It is almost like the game thinks you are in Dungeon Alert Status, but aren't. Incoming damage which is usually in the single digit and teens explodes to 50, 60, 100s depending on the level of the zone. I can consistently reproduce this, but not every time, I would assume this means there is something else involved here.

Example from Sands

I don't believe, though bare in mind I could be wrong, but DA doesn't exactly affect enemy damage signifcantly like that. It does add damage, supposedly in the form of stats specifically for damage increase, but unless it's adding 100+ damage mod to stats it shouldn't be like that, it's mainy defensive boosts they get, namely % dr it seems particularly with bosses on higher alert statuses.

Well, had a good 20+ minutes out there.

So far I was able to observe the 70's damage total. Got it to happen twice. Both when first encountering a group of gnolls. First was a Windlasher Gnoll melee strike and the other a Windlasher Evoker's melee stirke.

However, I could not get the bigger damage number to trigger while just standing there. And they had trouble hitting me so I had trouble telling if this was some sort of special attack they have. Which I suspect to be the case. A high damage 'sneak attack'-like attack.

Though the sample size is small and I can't confirm if such damage numbers were consistent with a pre u59 world.

For the records testing done with AC 42, Fortification 15%, PRR 19, MRR 40.

This makes me wonder, and as something I've noticed in the past, even if there's NO alert. You do take a movement speed penalty of like 1 or 2% you still get harried even with no alert, I believe I recall seeing that in combat logs before. Is this maybe going weird since U59 causing harried to be associated with DA more egregiously? This might be worth testing if possible, but this particularly might be something more specific to @Cordovan

I went into epic cogs and found a mob, they did about 10 damage a hit to me and had about 2900 hp. Had a second person run around to get dungeon alert and at DA 2 they were still doing roughly 10 damage and their hp did not change.

No DA

DA 2

I believe someone else tried as well, though specifically in sands, they mentioned it was only happening while they were moving, if possible would that be possible to replicate? as I stated before in this post, maybe harried ( which i've seen happen either in chat log or in movement speed + tab I can't remember which, is causing DA to trigger since it senses playeres are harried for movement speed? ) This is a shot in the dark and I'd test it myself but I won't really get time till weekend.

 

[Dvinesword]

So the other thread about issues is such a dumpster fire I don't want to post there. But some issues brought up there that aren't new per se:
1) Unicorns in Dryad raid being hard to taunt- not a new issue, I've been in runs long before recent work where they just didn't want to intim correctly and it is quite frustating when that happens

2) Hunt being extra hard- I've been in runs where there's dysnc between the what server thinks is going on and what players see. Where people call out "souls" but not a single soul shows on my screen; same way there's 2 videos of the same VoD raid (from different perspectives) where one person's video can see a vengeance circle and the other recording doesn't show it at all. I can't say if dysnc like this is worse or not since recent work, I will say that once you're aware of it that you notice it more often (this is a common issue with being aware of any type thing, the brain just starts looking for it).

It appears from what we can tell from some experimentation that Intimidate is not generating hate. It does the initial agro pull but does not generate the 200 hate per point of intimidate.

We tested this by having our tank intimidate a mob with his 138 intim so he should have generated 27,600 hate. I then fired one arrow doing 2486 damage with a -50% threat gen and immediately pulled agro. We were able to reproduce this consistantly.

We have also seen this with raids. before update 59 our tank was easily able to hold agro with bosses such as Kor Kaza in both KY and RTSO and keep her facing in the same direction. She would occasionally move if someone got a very high crit at just the right time but this was rare. Now after update 59 the dragon is constantly moving due to the loss of hate. This is as you can expect a big problem for the raid group.

The problem with the unicorns in dryad is I think less of a problem with keeping agro (though that contributes) as a problem with the increase in agro range since update 59. You need to keep the unicorns farther away from hawthorn or just kill them to stop the corruption.

 

[J1NG]

It might be nothing, not had enough time to check all of it yet (for other animations) to corroborate right now, but...

I'm currently speculating the issue is the animations and attacks on enemies are no longer triggering as they used to (pre U59).

A rough frame comparison of an enemy (Elf Ranger, in R4 Memoirs) animation doing an overhead two handed smash (melee) attack (with their bow) towards my character, had the attack trigger at different stages of the animation:

The one back in November of 2022 appears a little later (when their animation puts their hands right near the ground, almost on the upswing back up to a standing position).

The one now (post U59) appears mid way down instead. So it's by a fraction of a moment faster than it used to be.

A quick dirty test just now, also has me well over 6-10 feet 2/3 (meters away) away (moved away from them) before their animation even begins and I am still being hit (attack roll). This suggests that the attacks of enemies are now being calculated and triggered even though you are not in actual range of an attack or the animation for the attack on enemies has not even visually begun yet, so it's happening much sooner.

If this holds true, then the reason why players are experiencing a change in game but it's only just about perceivable but not easily found, and why the Devs can't see anything wrong, is because the reduced lag has unfortuantely caused the servers to process the attacks (and thus damage) now at different intervals that players have become accustomed to over the years prior.

I have yet to confirm this however, but it's one thing that I noticed during my observation from videos recorded before and new ones (just now). Unfortunately due to time constraints I am unable to check on the other animations to confirm this just now, but will do so later. Just putting this up here in case anyone has any old footage that they can go check on now as well until I can get back to checking proper.

J1NG

 

[Arcanaverse]

It might be nothing, not had enough time to check all of it yet (for other animations) to corroborate right now, but...

I'm currently speculating the issue is the animations and attacks on enemies are no longer triggering as they used to (pre U59).

A rough frame comparison of an enemy (Elf Ranger, in R4 Memoirs) animation doing an overhead two handed smash (melee) attack (with their bow) towards my character, had the attack trigger at different stages of the animation:

The one back in November of 2022 appears a little later (when their animation puts their hands right near the ground, almost on the upswing back up to a standing position).

The one now (post U59) appears mid way down instead. So it's by a fraction of a moment faster than it used to be.

A quick dirty test just now, also has me well over 6-10 feet 2/3 (meters away) away (moved away from them) before their animation even begins and I am still being hit (attack roll). This suggests that the attacks of enemies are now being calculated and triggered even though you are not in actual range of an attack or the animation for the attack on enemies has not even visually begun yet, so it's happening much sooner.

If this holds true, then the reason why players are experiencing a change in game but it's only just about perceivable but not easily found, and why the Devs can't see anything wrong, is because the reduced lag has unfortuantely caused the servers to process the attacks (and thus damage) now at different intervals that players have become accustomed to over the years prior.

I have yet to confirm this however, but it's one thing that I noticed during my observation from videos recorded before and new ones (just now). Unfortunately due to time constraints I am unable to check on the other animations to confirm this just now, but will do so later. Just putting this up here in case anyone has any old footage that they can go check on now as well until I can get back to checking proper.

J1NG

FWIW, this has been consistent with my observations as well. Even though mine are more anecdotal.

Mostly been paying attention to changes in monster behavior and comparing them during lag spikes. Suulomades from Vision of Destruction has been exhibiting strange behavior during those times (longer pauses between animations, and sometimes will go completely inactive for a time if the lag is bad enough) compared to when there isn't noticeable lag. Noticed it really bad tonight. Comparing to other runs from this week without lag spikes, Suulo acted fine.

Add that to the Dryad. Unicorns are more aggressive except for one night earlier this week where it was especially choppy for some reason, they were more timid and staying with the tank longer.

Small sample sizes and I lack recordings but seems to leaning in that direction.