Ninagauth's Killing Bolt sometimes fails to summon Spectre

[DiabloStorm]

I absolutely landed a killing blow with this spell, it crit and the killing blow was recorded on the soulbound gun i'm using which requires kills with empowered abilities and yet I was ripped off of my spectre ally. The spell is bugged.

 

Edited March 25, 2019 by DiabloStorm

[Boeroer]

Blightheart will register all actions you are doing when it comes to its upgrades. Like "apply x afflictions" will also work with spells, not only the weapon itself (very convenient). Don't know if that's intended - but that's nothing special to Killing Bolt - it works like that with all spells/abilites from other classes (Binding Roots e.g.) etc.

 

I don't know if this is the cause for Killing Bolt not summoning a spirit - but ususally it will summon one on kill. So yes - seems like a little bug (wherever it originates from). Would be easier to determine without using Blightheart I guess. If one would really want to investigate...

Edited March 25, 2019 by Boeroer

[DiabloStorm]

Blightheart will register all actions you are doing when it comes to its upgrades. Like "apply x afflictions" will also work with spells, not only the weapon itself (very convenient). Don't know if that's intended - but that's nothing special to Killing Bolt - it works like that with all spells/abilites from other classes (Binding Roots e.g.) etc.

 

I don't know if this is the cause for Killing Bolt not summoning a spirit - but ususally it will summon one on kill. So yes - seems like a little bug (wherever it originates from). Would be easier to determine without using Blightheart I guess. If one would really want to investigate...

redid this encounter multiple times, only this one time it failed to summon, gained killing blow with the bolt each time to get 3/10 with the gun. Also, yes, it was very convenient, upgraded it quickly up until this point.

[thelee]

wouldn't it be because the finishing blow was done technically by the blightheart corrode damage and not the killing bolt? every where else lashes are considered separate attacks (with separate PEN rolls)

[DiabloStorm]

wouldn't it be because the finishing blow was done technically by the blightheart corrode damage and not the killing bolt? every where else lashes are considered separate attacks (with separate PEN rolls)

As stated, I did this encounter multiple times, besides the 10% corrode lash (which happened every time) what other corrode damage are you referring to? Why would lash have anything to do with it?

[thelee]

 

wouldn't it be because the finishing blow was done technically by the blightheart corrode damage and not the killing bolt? every where else lashes are considered separate attacks (with separate PEN rolls)

As stated, I did this encounter multiple times, besides the 10% corrode lash (which happened every time) what other corrode damage are you referring to? Why would lash have anything to do with it?

 

if the enemy has 180 health and you hit them for 179 + 18 damage, the corrode lash is what kills them.

 

if in another attempt, you hit them for 181 + 18 damage, the killing bolt is what kills them.

 

the lash is considered a separate attack in some respects (separate PEN check, separate damage modifiers), even though it "rides along" with a base attack. so what i'm suggesting is that maybe you have to kill with the killing bolt itself, and not any add-on lash.

 

edit - easiest way to verify would be if there was a console command that let you dump enemy health information

Edited March 25, 2019 by thelee

[DiabloStorm]

 

 

wouldn't it be because the finishing blow was done technically by the blightheart corrode damage and not the killing bolt? every where else lashes are considered separate attacks (with separate PEN rolls)

As stated, I did this encounter multiple times, besides the 10% corrode lash (which happened every time) what other corrode damage are you referring to? Why would lash have anything to do with it?

 

if the enemy has 180 health and you hit them for 179 + 18 damage, the corrode lash is what kills them.

 

if in another attempt, you hit them for 181 + 18 damage, the killing bolt is what kills them.

 

the lash is considered a separate attack in some respects (separate PEN check, separate damage modifiers), even though it "rides along" with a base attack. so what i'm suggesting is that maybe you have to kill with the killing bolt itself, and not any add-on lash.

 

edit - easiest way to verify would be if there was a console command that let you dump enemy health information

 

Interesting... but then the lash counts as an empowered ability? The gun still tallied the kill, remember.

[thelee]

 

 

 

wouldn't it be because the finishing blow was done technically by the blightheart corrode damage and not the killing bolt? every where else lashes are considered separate attacks (with separate PEN rolls)

As stated, I did this encounter multiple times, besides the 10% corrode lash (which happened every time) what other corrode damage are you referring to? Why would lash have anything to do with it?

 

if the enemy has 180 health and you hit them for 179 + 18 damage, the corrode lash is what kills them.

 

if in another attempt, you hit them for 181 + 18 damage, the killing bolt is what kills them.

 

the lash is considered a separate attack in some respects (separate PEN check, separate damage modifiers), even though it "rides along" with a base attack. so what i'm suggesting is that maybe you have to kill with the killing bolt itself, and not any add-on lash.

 

edit - easiest way to verify would be if there was a console command that let you dump enemy health information

 

Interesting... but then the lash counts as an empowered ability? The gun still tallied the kill, remember.

 

yeah, my hypothesis is that killing bolt + lash basically functions like a full attack when dual-wielding.

 

empowered full attack: you hit with your main hand (killing bolt), and then your off hand (corrode lash), the corrode lash kills it.

 

the empowered full attack counts for blightheart's purposes, but when separated out like this it becomes much clearer that the killing bolt itself isn't doing the slaying for its own purposes - it checks with the "main hand" attack only and doesn't care what comes after.

 

this is just a hypothesis based on how i've seen lashes function in combat and really would need some testing (ideally with an enemy with known health) to verify.

 

edit - i'm not saying they are completely distinct attacks, but they are distinct enough. i suspect killing bolt is an "atomic" unit that is a package says "do X damage. did I kill it? spawn a spectre" and then adding a lash to that adds an extra sentence that does "do .1x corrode damage". from blightheart's perspective, it's all one empowered package, but from killing bolt's perspective, that corrode damage comes after the killed-by-killing-bolt check. or something like that.

 

edit 2 - another way to verify (without needing to know enemy healthy) would be just to see if you still get random behavior without blightheart. e.g. do a lot of runs without blightheart and killing with ninagauth's. if you never get a flaky kill this way, then it seems much more likely it's the corrode lash that's doing it.

 

edit 3 - this is not to rule out the possibility that this shouldn't be the way killing bolt works. essence interrupter is fairly fool proof, and i suspect it's because it applies a debuff first, and that debuff is further triggered on death. if killing bolt creates a debuff that would on death trigger a spectre spawning, that would be immune to this hypothesized effect. but then again essence interrupter has problems with messing up loot tables, so maybe it's for the best it's not implemented this way...

Edited March 25, 2019 by thelee

[Boeroer]

@thelee: good point! That might be. Tricky though and hard to test as you said. Also a bit of an oversight on Obsidian's part. We had morethan Blightheart's lash in the past which could add lashes to spells (Turning Wheel for example) - and that would mean the Bolt wouldn't spawn a spectre and you wouldn't know why. I mean it's a very minor thing but still...

 

@DiabloStorm: For the Blightheart upgrade it doesn't matter which entity (Blightheart itself, Killing Bolt, other spell etc.) delivers the killing blow as long as it originates from you.

[DiabloStorm]

Happened again without the gun btw, enemy was standing in an amphora flame but took no damage from it, i even stood in the flame directly afterward to test and received no damage from it so pretty sure the only thing landing the kill was the bolt.