ready4you

heya guys, just wanted to bring out some ongoing issues with bonedancer class.

Many of these are things that mythic has failed to fix since the class has come out so I am hoping that here, where the admins actually care about broken issues..something might happen. I understand that there are lots of other broken things atm, but i would just like to say that the stuff I am listing make many parts of the class specs basically unplayable.

Some of the things I am listing below are ongoing issues with the class and also some things that have come up just on purga. Tthe bonedancer team lead notes can be found HERE for reference.


Broken /missing BD components

1. Pets have no weapons- This is a PURGA related problem. This is a major issue because bone army spec relies extensively on the pets to actually do damage. THe commander/warrior pets are not doing styles without access to the weapons. .thus their damage has been really pathetic. Very difficult to kill even yellow mobs, much less players. Also archer pets are not using a bow to attack. Will it be possible to add back weapons to the pets along with their access to corresponding styles for those weapons to at least live standards?

2. Darkness line pets are going into melee. - This is also a live server issue. WHenever the attack command is given, many times the Mystic and shaman pets will go into melee mode on mob along with commander instead of casting/debuffing like they are supposed to do. In melee mode they do basically no dmg and offer nothing in dps Perhaps some code needs to be put in to keep them ranged attack only so they can continue casting?

3. Pets are not assisting commander- This is an issue on live as well, where the melee pets will break off from commander to attack other targets. This significantly reduces their performance because dmg is not concentrated and they are easily beaten one vs one. This makes bone army spec almost completely useless and also a liability (due ot breaking crowd control) unless the bone dancer is only fighting one opponent. Bone army spec bone dancer has very little survivability without pets, since they do not have access high lvl lifetap nor any signifiacant damage spell that will be of much use in rvr. Bone army has to spec to 48 to have access to pets that are high enough con to be of any threat. Please add code to make pets assist commander target or the target the player selects.

4. Ranged Commander is necessary - This is an issue on both Purga and Live. The bone commander pet is a liability to bone army and Darkness spec bone dancers because the pets are linked to its death. The commander will charge into mobs or people and will die, taking the other pets with it. This problem is very concerning for bone army spec because it utilizes archer pets which are supposed to ranged. Whenever commander charges into players/mobs it dies and makes any benifit of having the range on archer pets worthless. For darkness spec , the commander also makes it so that the debuffer/caster pets wil die (nullifying any advantage that ranged pets/players should have) and leave the bone dancer with just a DD attack. This is not an issue for supression spec bds because their healer pets heal them when set on passive and thus commander isnt really in any danger as the caster is using mainly life taps for that purpose of damage. (although they have their own issue atm with healers not healing which was already discussed i think)

Please seriously look into adding a ranged commander option or perhaps makign option for commander to bepassive while minions attack as suggested by the Bone dancer Team leaders for past several years as this really kills much of the effectivness of the bone army and darkness specs.


There are probably other issues atm but i think for now these are the major ones that really break the class into being basically unplayable on purga and live atm. I am not asking anyone to make anyone overpowered or anything, but please if you can, try to fix these things so that the class specs can actually work


thank you

fulgore

i just wanted to point out that pets are not a formidable method of damage on any freeshard.. all pets do crappy damage, so even if bonedancers were given styles (i mean, you guys are already lifetapping at capped damage regardless of targets resists) the pet damage would still be extremely low

__________________
Twopointfive - Silver Hand Mentalist

ready4you

yes i know pets are doing low dmg generally..but im talking about at least making the class abilities perform in the proper manner. Tweaking pet dmg can follow if it needs to be done. Just for now, things should just be getting to be made to where they are working. That is all i am saying. Even if pet dmg remains a bit low, at least its working and can be improved upon later.

I would like to add that non suppression spec bonedancers do not have the access to high lvl life tap abilities and their survivability using supression spec after obtaining high lvl darkness or bone army is very low. They will usually only be able to spec around 24 into supression which grants only the lvl 22 life tap....thus they rely more upon their base spec skills and pets to do dmg.

IF_Single

Not sure but isnt it a bug if you have more than 2 healers and a bone commander ?


Seen this today and in the past if its a bug.

__________________
Habla no Espanola

fulgore

i don't know how bd pets work on purga but on live you can have up to 3 pets. i don't know the exact formula, but you can make 3 of the lowest level (15 and 18) grey border pets and probably 1 of the highest (red border 45 and 48) with a low one. not too sure how it works exactly

__________________
Twopointfive - Silver Hand Mentalist

IF_Single

Well today i witnessed a BD with 3 green healers and one blue commander.


He had 6 hibs on him and no one could kill him.

__________________
Habla no Espanola

ready4you

The commander's level is 80% of the caster's level (82% for the final pet in the line)

Multiple minons can be s****ned, depending on the casters level. Each minion's level is 75% of the caster's level or the maximum given in the spell, which ever is lower. There is a total hard level cap of 75 for controlled minions; this means at the highest level the 3rd minion pet will need to be of a lower level to s****n.

This means you can have 3 minions aside from comander total. The following is table of the fossil healers and the lvl bd obtains them....

18 S****n Bonepatcher Max L18
24 S****n Bonefixer Max L22
30 S****n Bonebuilder Max L27
36 S****n Bonehealer Max L31
42 S****n Boneknitter Max L36
48 S****n Bonemender Max L45

pell Level - Minion Name - Amount Healed Per Cast

18 - Bonepatcher - 67
24 - Bonefixer - 82
30 - Bonebuilder - 101
36 - Bonehealer - 116
42 - Boneknitter - 135
48 - Bonemender - 138

i dont think its possible to cast 3 lvl 36 pets though..those would be the green ones...but you could have ag reen pet and some greys...so maybe that is what you saw?

It could be something going on though....but would need some proof and this really isnt the thread for that... this is the thread to try to get some totaly broken (not working at all) things done

artexx

fulgore insta lifetab is fixed test with mom5 you hit xxx for 375 dmg on capped resist

LeBron

1)I have no info on sub pet styles,only info on commander styles.Please find some info related to this first.
And the problem with weapon is not so important,it's just a visual one,but I think I have modified pet appearance to 1.83 live patch,so it looks strange to me that you don't see pet weapons.

2)Also small info on pet spells here,is mystic supposed to cast snare dd or a simpe one?
And as for shammy pet - what debuffs does he have?I think he casts disease,mb something else.

3)Sub pets are always attacking the same target as commander,so the assist is working good.This is what I remember from my testings.

4)This is an interesting idea.I will do this after I finish other important things.

__________________
http://gimpchimp.etilader.com/s.php?u=lebron

ready4you

Hi lebron, thanks for replying. I have been trying to collect some hard data to backup
my suspecions and explain some of the things that occured to me while doing preliminary
testing, as well as offer incite into how the abilities/situation should be behaving. I
believe you asked for some of this data specificially for the pet info so here goes. Since
i first posted I have done some more testing and have found some additional issues while
looking over abilities, as well as resolving in part some of the prior concerns.

The following will hopefully provide you with enough resources to perhaps be able to do
something if you feel it is needed. I will make several reply posts to seperate each

response to your inquiries to make for easier reading.

Previously known Issues

1. Pets have No weapons; -- During my initial tests i found that the pets were
not displaying their weapons while attacking and by also looking at the poor damage that
was being done, also assumed that they were just doing 'bare fist' dmg. no styles, nothing.

just default attack such as found in this
screenshott i took

when they did it. . During this the commander was also going weaponless as you can see

with a closer inspection
here

After closer examination of the commander's damage, I have concluded that this may be some

sort of display bug for the commander at least. I notice that it only occurs when you
s****n out a commander using the silver tower shield. If you call out the model that uses

the Large Block shield you get the normal result and animations
here

However i would like to draw attention to the next picture in which shows the minion pets
with weapons equiped on their backs while going into melee mode with bare fists. This can
be seen here

I am still concerned about the commander and minion damage however...as i delved their
respective petinfo screens and found out that they are supposed to have the same dmg..as

seen here and

http://img257.imageshack
.us/img257/7294/soldierdelve3nf.jpg

I had the exact same bone army spec on live and i believe the damage from the minions is
way off, but atm i do not have physical proof to show, but that will hopefully soon be
resolved.

If anyone could clarify what the values under the Damage heading mean in actual terms such

as for the value in the screen shots 45 respectively, then that might clarify the issue.
If it is a pure damage value then I can say that at the time of that screen shot the pets
were not doing 45 dmg, even on neutral resist mobs. At the time they were doingng about 24

and capping off at around 30.

With that said however, I will be doing extensive testing on commander/minion damage as
soon as finish leveling a shaman to aid in the testing process. The log results will

hopefully
be posted soon. This test can be found
here and will be setup to mirror the one performed at the
Bonedancer team leader forum.

I will try to have the results in within a few days.

While the commander has been using the one hand axe/mace styles, I do know howver that the

sub minion warriors are not using styles at all, so hopefully the following data will
provide the ability to include sub pet styles into Purga.


PET DATA FOR LEBRON

excerpts clipped from Lemo's and Gaavasti's pet testing on VN boards.

Lemo's data has been used in the bone dancer team leader's guides to the class and TL
reports such as found at the

Bone Dancer Team lead forum

Gaavasto performed recent extensive testing and analysis of darkness spec pets since the
patch 1.76 that changed how they worked previously.

for references Lemo's can be found

here and


Gaavasti's can be

found[url="http://vnboards.ign.com/midgard_mystic_professions/b20914/95744200/p2"]here[/URL

]

ready4you

This data contains the pet styles used by commander.



(note. Patch 1.83 added an additional weapon (two hand axe, but I have no found any
conclusive data as to the speed or cap of the item. With the exception of this, the
information is still current)

The following data contains information about the Fossil Guardians under supression spec


The following contians information about The bone army spec line pets



The following information is in regard to the Bone army spec archer pets


(note . There was no specific draw time for the archers but it was estimated by the bone
dancer team lead sheena, that their dps was 50% less than the fossil soldier pets which can
be checked for reference in the Bonedancer TL Report v 1.68 (3/1/04)

In my observations of the archer pets, i believe their draw speed on PURGA is acceptable
however their dmg output seems to need a good bit of adjustment. I will be testing that
along with the othe rmelee pets and post the results asap.

I would like to note that they are consistantly getting into melee mode and will not
rearm their bow. Bone dancer must destroy them, and recast them again to be able to put them
back into ranged mode. I have done 12 test on mobs with them doing this everytime after
they have engaged into melee. Perhaps some adjustment to their Ai is needed to keep them in
range or perhaps make them weaponswitch after combat.It is also suggested that a bow using Ranged Commander be added in the bone army base line or bone army spec line with the exact stats as the archers so as to make these pets viable for the bone dancer, unlike it is currently with a melee commander.

ready4you

2. Here is the information you requested for mystics.

.
Lebron asks

They are supposed to have both, according to gaavasti and the patch notes of 1.76.

The added DD is still on Body dmg, same as former life tap. this is confirmed by gaavasti below.

Gaavasti mentions this in his testing

.


Delve values for the Mystics dmg are listed by Gaavasti and has been confirmed by Lemo's previous testing to under his thread in VN boards. Delves are posted by gaavasti as follows for cap dmg....done on grey mobs

Caps on the bone mystics

15 S****n Bonemage 127 cap
21 S****n Bonecaster 163 cap
27 S****n Bone Shaman 199 cap
33 S****n Bone Warlock 244 cap
39 S****n Bone Diviner 271 cap
45 S****n Bone Warmage 307 cap

307 was the mutually derived cap by both individuals for the highest dmg on mystics.

Gaavasti also proposed what spell dmg is like from these pets on mobs in the following excepert with his test log. From here it seems that mob dmg would be 2/3 of the delve value for the spell dmg at given lvl of the caster. Caster levels in this test were lvl 30 mystics vs lvl 40 mob and lvl 50 mob. It appears that that his assumptions were correct on the test with the lvl 40 mob. It second test it seems that with mob 20 lvls higher than the mystic, they suffer 50% reduction in dmg I will try to do a full test on this as well, using vs mob scenerio, and vs player.




As for the seer pets (debuffers)





Lebron asks


The seer is suspposed to cast a 20 second 50% haste debuff, and a 1 minute disease.and then go into melee. have only seen the seers on Purga cast cold debuff.....so i think something is mixed up, although a cold debuff does help the bone dancer do a bit more dmg from what i have tried out. I do think it is a good idea to keep them in ranged casting debuffs though, because their melee is very poor right now, and they are not supposed to have styles according to Lemo's report. I think them doing a quick debuff then meleeing would be harmful to the caster in the end.

quoting directly from gaavasti, this is also backed up from several posts on the bone dancer team lead forum and Lemo

I Seer Pets

18 S****n Bonebreaker
24 S****n Bonejinxer
30 S****n Bonecurser
36 S****n Bonebeguiler
42 S****n Bonebewitcher
48 S****n Bonehexer

Lemos findings


It is suggested that a Ranged Commander be developed in the bone army base line or Darkness mystic spec line that will either use archer Ai or be made into an aditional mystic ranged caster Ai so as to not hinder the performance of the dependant (linked to its death) pets by going into melee against hopeless odds.

ready4you

3. Pets are not assisting commander


Lebron says

.

I find that to be true in most cases after doing more in depth studying of it. however I have found that sometimes the minions WILL break off from the rest such as what occured in this instance here

From what i can tell, if you are attacking multiple targets, and switch between one to another (and are being attacked), the minion will keep attacking one and the pets will passive and will split off to go to another target as what happened in that screenshot. the live moose wa sthe first target, the dead one is where the other 2 pets attacked it after i obtained aggro. Notice the fossil soldier still attacking it solo while the others are passive. It was rare that it happened but it was repeatable if i had several targets i was attacking and if i had obtained aggro from one and then changed pets around to off tank it.

Im ont sure what can be done about that..but i can imagine in fast pace rvr..that might be aproblem since you are probably assisting and might need to change target if you see a enemy caster or healer doing their thing unopposed or something and need it dead fast.

So far though, the pets have been assisting pretty well but i have not done any tests yet on where you are attacking a player in another group. On live the pets would split up and attack other enemy group members, and would not just go to any one person.


NEW ISSUES

1. Id like to report that the level 31 damage add (Bone daggers) in bone army spec is missing, and has instead the lvl 31 Str/COn buff as its delve and function. When you go to cast it, it adds the str/con buff to pets, not the damage add. The correct value for the dmg add should be

you can find it at the mythic website here

2. Inability to Change Bone commander weaponary

After about 40 sumons, I was unable to sumon anything but sword/shield variety of bone commander. Also the recent live 1.83 patch of being able to select your commander's weapon has not been enabled on purga it seems. This would be of an immense help to not only the BD class of all specs, but spirit masters and other pet classes that were given that ability to cater their pet to their needs.. Commander needs to have access to two hand weapons for added dps.

ready4you

Hiya people, as promised here are some hard figures as to whats going on with bone dancer pet damage.

The test was done with my lvl 50 bone dancer vs my lvl 39 38aug spec shaman. Pets were unbuffed dread commander (lvl 41) , bone razer (lvl 37 warrior pet) , and bone dead eye (lvl 37 archer pet)

Shaman was fully buffed and had 0 slash resistance, 5 crush resistance. Using starter gear armors
Shaman Chain armor Stats
Shaman Studded armor Stats

This test was meant to replicate as closely as possible, one done on the bone dancer team lead forum here
Their shaman had sub par armor such as mine , along with 8% slash resistance and 11% crush resistance.

A second test using level 50 target player will be done shortly so to make final conclusions.


I have summarized the results here, but Chatlogs can be found in html formats listed beneath.The logs are from my Shaman's perspective.

Note. The commander, archer, and osldier all seemed to share similar attack speed rate, however in commander case, the data showed numbers closer to 3.5 with reptition. The warrior pets and archers were closer to 3.45 so i decided to play it safe and round down to that. However I suppose you could assume that they are all attacking at the same speed.

To look at the log data for combat, follow the links below and click on the Overview/details section. The chat log text file is linked there as well from the top right. I will also provide links to.zip file of all chat log files aquired below this link section for direct dl if that method of looking at the data is preferable to some. To view the data export it all into one directory then click 0index.html file.

Archer Pet On Chain Armor
Archer Pet on Studded Armor
Warrior Pet On Chain Armor
Warrior Pet on Studded Armor

Dread Commander on Chain Armor
Dread Commander on Studded Armor

Bone Dancer Team Lead Test Log

DIRECT FILE DL's
Right click save as should work.
Archer On Chain ZIP

Archer On Studded ZIP

Commander On Chain ZIP

Commander On Studded ZIP

Soldier On Chain ZIP

Soldier On Studded ZIP


THE RESULTS

test1 archer
Slash dmg arrows



test
1. 11 shots
2. 11 shots
3. 10 shots
4. 13 shots
5. 12 shots
6. 12 shots
7. 7 shots
8. 12 shots
9. 12 shots

on

441 AF in newbie armor chain

Results
---------------------
3.45 spd fire rate

15.1dps


62 avg damage per shot






Test2 archer
Slash dmg arrows

Test
1. 12 shots
2. 12 shots
3. 9 shots
4. 13 shots
5. 13 shots
6. 9 shots
7. 12 shots
8. 10 shots
9. 7 shots
10. 7 shots

on

415AF studded newbie armor


Results
-----------

3.45 spd fire rate

21.9 dps

83 avg damage per shot







commander test 2
one hand slash damage

Test
1. 12 swings
2. 13 swings
3. 12 swings
4. 16 swings
5. 14 swings
6. 12 swings
7. 9 swings
8 20 swings

on

441 AF chain newbie armor

Results

-----------

3.5 attack speed


18.7 dps

85 avg damage per attack




Commander test 1
one hand Slash damage

1. 9 swings
2. 9 swings
3. 9 swings
4. 9 swings
5. 9 swings
6. 9 swings
7. 11 swings
8. 14 swings
9. 14 swings
10. 9 swings

on

415 AF studded newbie armor


Results

-----------

3.5 Attack speed

26.1 dps

113 avg damage per attack


Soldier test1
Two hand cleaver

Test
1. 11 swings
2. 10 swings
3. 12 swings
4. 12 swings
5. 15 swings
6. 13 swings
7. 13 swings
8. 7 swings
9. 12 swings

on

441 AF newbie chain armor



Results

--------------

3.45 Attack speed


15.6 dps


63 avg damage per attack






Soldier damage 2

two hand cleaver

Test
1. 12 swings
2. 13 swings
3. 12 swings
4. 12 swings
5. 9 swings
6. 12 swings
7. 13 swings
8. 13 swings
9. 12 swings

on

415 AF studded newbie armor


Results

-----------


3.45 Attack speed

19.6 dps


85 avg damage per attack



Conclusions.

From looking at the data, My hunch about pet damage being off from live values was correct. From comparing the data found at the BD team lead test, pet damages across the board are significantly lower on average.

1.All the pets are using slash damage.

2. There is no change of dmg type based on weapon model used nor in dmg done, so a commander using two hand mace is doing slash dmg and the same amount of damage as iif he were using a one hand axe.

3. Only commander is using a type of style.


Archer damage

While archer dps is higher on Purga than on live, (15.1 dps compared to 11.9 ) it still remains the lowest dps out of all the pets and it has significantly lower dmg per shot rate at 62 on chain and 83 on studded. . Even factoring in 10% resistance from chain, the avg damage is still low at around 68 compared to BD team lead test of 99. Note the dmg to studded leather on Purga is Still significantly lower than the avg dmg on the Live test, even though studded leather has vulnerability to slash..

I Recommend looking at bringing archer dmg up to around 23.6 dps at the least, while also keeping the bow spd the same so as to bring up to live server dmg per shot.


Warrior Pet damage

Bone razer dps on average is 15.6 with attack speed of 3.45 with average dmg of 63 done on chain armor. This is down from 23.6 dps from live.with 2.66 attack speed and average of 69 (taking into account added slash resistance of 8 on test it is actually 73) using a one handed weapon. Even hitting studded leather (vulnerable to slash) warrior dps didnt reach live standard dps. Studded dps is 19.6, live standard is 23.6. Warrior pet attack speed on Purga is much slow AND it does less damage per hit and on average than Live test.

Warrior pets are sharing the issue with the commander in that no matter which weapon is chosen on graphic model on their backs, they do not benifit from anyhigher damage, whether its one hand or two hand. They are also not using any style or at the least not the styles they are supposed to be using. You will notice from the log that my shaman was never hit for any special style effects.

I believe that adding their appropriate styles with dmg bonus modifiers will solve some of their poor dmg problem if they are also given access to appropriate speed on their weapon swings. At the least, live standard probably could be considered for the weapon attack speed and dps until a solution can be found to give them varied weapons
.
Following data is taken from LEMOS VN POST and from Sheena (ex bd-teamlead) bd forum.

Here are the styles they are supposed to be using

AXE styles

Splitter (anytime),
Plague (anytime, taunt),

Pillager (anytime, attack speed debuff),
Plunderer (followup to Pillager, snare),

Evernight (rear positional, bleed).


Their two hand axe dmg caps are as follows (taken from LEMOS VN Thread)

2H Great Axe, 274 unstyled cap
2H Large Axe, 265 unstyled cap
2H War Cleaver, 253 unstyled cap

1h damage appears to be capped at 108 to even con mob/player if you look at the BD TL test. Highest cap hit on chain was 92 (-16) (The BD team lead shaman was lvl 39 vs lvl 37 warrior pet)

ready4you

This is the continuation of my post above, and also to other posts i made prior in this thread, providing information for LeBron and other site visitors.

Commander Damage

Commander has the highest dps of the pets at 18.7 and attack speed of 3.5 with all weapons. Compared to the normal warrior pet dps on live, it stilll pales in comparison. Live warrior pet dps is 23.6 as descriped on BD TL forum test. The only time commander dps reaches/marginalyl passes standard dps on live is when he hits vulnerable to slash armor. Studded dps for commander was 26.1. Commander at the moment is only using one style which is of indeterminante origin as he uses the same style using all weapon types.

Here is an example of the commander doing slash damage with a crush weapon
Commander using Mace

If you look at the commander damage from teh BD team lead test, it appears to be to be from fairly slow one hand hammer. 3 hits are shown with speeds of about 3.5-4.0 from the swing rate on the log, with the dmg ranging from 172-175 andh 11% crush resistance to it. The max dmg cap hit the commander on my test hit on studded leather 130 (+11) and this was a vulnerability to slash dmg type. Chain is neutral to crush, so thus the commander in the Live test is doing at the least 61-65 more dmg than commanders on Purga per hit using a one hand weapon. Note the one hand hammer cap on live is 233 unstyled.

The commander shares the same misfortune that the other warrior pets have , in that ALL weapons chosen use the same damage,speed, and damage type. It appears some display bug makes commander look like hes holding a shield but wielding a two hander whenever two hand weapon commanders are s****ned. Howeever i have determined that his DPS is higher than the other minions either as a result of his lvl difference (he is lvl 41 as compared to lvl 37 for other pets) vs the shaman (lvl 39) and/or as a result of the style that he chains.

With that said, I will like to note that he only uses that one style (i believe splitter which is suppsoed tobe axe only) with ALL weapons. He does not do any other styles that he is supposed to have access to. I have tried rear and side positionals but he does not attack using them.

In short, the commander needs his styles added, in addition to boosting his base dmg up.. I recommend at the least , he be given access to his normal styles as per the following, and/or bring his normal dps up to live warrior pet standard of 23.6 dps.

Following data is taken from LEMOS VN POST and from Sheena (ex bd-teamlead) bd forum.

Styles the commander should be using

When wielding axes commander uses

Splitter (anytime)
Evernight (rear positional, bleed effect)

When wielding a hammer, the commander uses

Thor's Anvil (anytime)
Frost Hammer (side positional, snare).

When wielding a sword, the commander uses

Whirling Blade (anytime)
Northern Lights (side positional, attack speed debuff)

Commander weapon dmg caps as per Lemo's post are as follows

2H Great Sword, 5.4s, 362 unstyled cap
2H Great Hammer, 5.3s, 355 unstyled cap
1H Bastard Sword, 4.1s, 276 unstyled cap
1H Long Sword, 3.6s, 242 unstyled cap
1H War Hammer, 3.5s, 233 unstyled cap
1H War Axe, 3.1s, 210 unstyled cap
1H Small Hammer, 2.8s, 185 unstyled cap
1H Bearded Axe, 2.7s, 180 unstyled cap
1H Hand Axe, 2.4s, 158 unstyled cap


There is a two hand axe now, but I do no have data on it atm.