Potions / Consumables: glitchy? And: action queue?

[Faldorn]

Hey everyone,

 

not sure if this belongs here or rather in the technical support forums.

Anyways, is it just me, or are potions and other consumables such as food a little glitchy?

 

When prepping for a tough fight and using multiple food items in close succession, it often happens to me that clicking on the appropriate quick slot does nothing. Sometimes it works, sometimes not. I am aware that there is of course some kind of cooldown involved. But since I am out of combat, I do not see a recovery bar or anything. Has this happened to anyone else? I really think that a visible "action queue" (maybe above character portraits) would really help here... The icon showing the current action is often not really helpful on those occasions. The same goes when casting spells: Often, the icon still shows my character casting when I pause the game, although the corresponding spell has already taken effect. Makes things somewhat confusing at times.

 

Also, during fights, I am frequently unable to use potions: The character sometimes even plays his "quaff potion" animation, but the number of potions in the quickslot remains the same, and there is no effect.

 

As with food items, this does not happen all the time, though.

 

Am I suspecting correctly that using potions or reading scrolls in a fight is an interruptable action? Maybe that has to do with it. The combat log didn't show me anyhting in that regard, however.

 

All in all, that really discourages me from using potions and such more.

 

What are your thoughts?

[Loren Tyr]

It's not necessarily a glitch as such, but yeah... clicking a second consumable while still consuming the first one won't do anything, since the character is still busy. As such the second consumption doesn't happen at all. What you can do is queue them (ie. shift-click), that way your character will start eating the second (third, etc.) consumable once no longer busy.

 

And indeed, in combat using items is interruptable like anything else, which is where investing in some Concentration will rather pay off. You should see the interrupts listed in the combat log though. And the character should still try to finish the action afterwards, though I do suspect that in some cases the AI takes over and switches to auto-attack / resumes the action the character was performing before being commanded to consume the potion or whatever.

[Lychnidos]

It does nothing even with shift clicking?

[Faldorn]

It's not necessarily a glitch as such, but yeah... clicking a second consumable while still consuming the first one won't do anything, since the character is still busy. As such the second consumption doesn't happen at all. What you can do is queue them (ie. shift-click), that way your character will start eating the second (third, etc.) consumable once no longer busy.

 

And indeed, in combat using items is interruptable like anything else, which is where investing in some Concentration will rather pay off. You should see the interrupts listed in the combat log though. And the character should still try to finish the action afterwards, though I do suspect that in some cases the AI takes over and switches to auto-attack / resumes the action the character was performing before being commanded to consume the potion or whatever.

I see, thanks for the clarification on using potions mid-fight.

 

Concerning consumabels: When you say it like that, it sounds a lot like a design decision: The devs probably tried to avoid people clicking on a consumable multiple times if it is not consumed immediatly (character still busy) and thereby enqueuing the same consumable multiple times (since you often have a stack of 5 or so in your quick-slot).

 

I know about manual enqueuing by shift-clicking, I just don't think it is very clear what is happening without a visualisation of said queue. Another option would be to "grey out" quick slots while the character is still busy out of combat and shift is not pressed.

[Loren Tyr]

I agree, it certainly could be clearer. Some kind of visualisation of queued actions (consumable or otherwise) would have been quite useful. We can petition them to put it in PoE2, though .