The Black Path + Envenomed Strike bug [3.03]

[Jojobobo]

If you kill an enemy with the full attack component of an Envenomed Strike while using the Black Path, the poison component instead gets applied to the entire group affected by the Black Path. This is a little overpowered, as you can consistently target weak enemies close to death with an Envenomed Strike to easily exploit this. Below is an Envenomed Strike aimed at a Xaurip Priest:

 

 

EDIT: In addition to this, The Black Path seems to be benefiting from the added accuracy of FoD on a FoD kill too.

Edited August 2, 2016 by Jojobobo

[Loren Tyr]

That does seem a touch overpowered, yes. Sounds rather similar in a way to the Consecrated Ground bug, where depending on timing of the CG pulse a currently active one-hit status effect from an ability gets tacked onto that as well: http://forums.obsidian.net/topic/88371-303-issue-with-knock-down-and-necrotic-lance/. Sounds like it's doing that here too. 

[Jojobobo]

Yeah it sounds like more or less the same thing. I just tested it with Tall Grass, and I didn't Prone in an area, so attacks where the rolls aren't synchronised don't work with the bug (as in with the Tall Grass,the roll against Deflection goes first, then the roll to Prone).

 

However, testing it with Knock Down (Girdle of the Driving Wave) it does work - again presumably because the two rolls are simultaneous. Given that the Black Path has a rather enormous AoE, it is bit crazy. Here's the pic:

 

[Loren Tyr]

Looking into it at the moment, I think there's something else going on (here and with Consecrated Ground). Tall Grass simply has an ItemMod which temporarily activates a StatusEffect on the wielder when attacking, resulting in the possible Prone on the enemy. But Knockdown has a Prone attached as an affliction to the main attack, which gets processed as a secondary attack when the primary attack is processed. There's never a StatusEffect that is active on the wielder in this case, it is essentially confined to the AttackBase object instead. Which makes me wonder how it is actually carrying over to Consecrated Ground at all, since there it really is just a matter of simultaneous occurrence (whereas with Black Path there is at least a triggering effec - triggered effect relation).

[Sking]

After giving this issue some love, I found that: Envenomed Strike plus Black Path seems to only work if you kill the creature with the base attack. Where the combat log will simply state 'Paladin killed monster.' This isn't the easiest thing to set up. If Envenomed Strike contributes to the kill the issue will not occur. Being such a specific issue we may not have time to address it, but I will add it to the list.

 

I'm more curious about the Consecrated Ground issue. I still haven't been able to reproduce it on my end. hopefully Loren (the scientist) can figure something out, but I'm going to keep trying.

 

I got your backs

- Sking

 

[Edit] I was able to reproduce the Consecrated Ground issue finally. Became a lot easier once I switched to two weapons.

[Jojobobo]

That's fine, I just thought I'd make mention of it. It's easy enough to avoid if you know what you're looking for.

[Loren Tyr]

After giving this issue some love, I found that: Envenomed Strike plus Black Path seems to only work if you kill the creature with the base attack. Where the combat log will simply state 'Paladin killed monster.' This isn't the easiest thing to set up. If Envenomed Strike contributes to the kill the issue will not occur. Being such a specific issue we may not have time to address it, but I will add it to the list.

 

I'm more curious about the Consecrated Ground issue. I still haven't been able to reproduce it on my end. hopefully Loren (the scientist) can figure something out, but I'm going to keep trying.

 

I got your backs

- Sking

 

[Edit] I was able to reproduce the Consecrated Ground issue finally. Became a lot easier once I switched to two weapons.

 

Good to hear that you managed to reproduce it as well, hopefully it'll be possible to figure out the root cause there. And maybe the Black Path bug helps in that regard, under the presumption that they have the same cause. 

 

Consecrated Ground plus Knockdown (or Blinding Strike, etc.) does happen with single weapon as well by the way, though it's indeed trickier to get the timing right. As it happens, after seeing the Black Path bug I was actually trying that out earlier today under the random suspicion that there might be some dual-wielding specificity to it (there isn't).

 

Edit: I also got Consecrated Ground plus Envenomed Strike to work now (was checking if it worked with Primary Attack stuff as well). And Knockdown (as well as Envenomed Strike) plus Black Path, after consoling Black Path onto Eder. Now that I know when it occurs I also found an easy way to get the Black Path issue to manifest: just set Might to 10000 (or something) to vaporize the initial target with one base attack, and watch every other enemy in range disappear in a poisonous mist as well. 

Edited August 2, 2016 by Loren Tyr

[Loren Tyr]

I've been digging into it a bit further, I'm more and more convinced that the Consecrated Ground and Black Path issues are the same (which is handy, since it's much less finnicky to test with). Anything that piggybacks on the one does so with the other as well (not surprisingly, the same issue applies to Strange Mercy as well by the way). I though it was just stuff implemented as Afflictions (eg. with Wounding Shot only the Hobbling and not the Wounding carries over), but have now found an exception to that: Sundering Blow also imparts its DR reduction through Black Path and Consecrated Ground, though it is not implemented via the Affliction route. I also confirmed Jojobobo's earlier observation that Black Path benefits from FoD's accuracy bonus as well. Perhaps the Wounding effect actually does carry over as well, but it just has no primary damage component in the Black Path hit to work with and doesn't do anything. 

 

The issue seems to be confined to effects of abilities, weapon effects (eg. Disorienting, Vile Loner's Lance) are not transferred. This suggests that the cause lies in the mechanism by which GenericAbilities marked as UsePrimaryAttack or UseFullAttack apply their effects to modify the actual primary/full weapon attack. Somehow Black Path and Consecrated Ground get tagged with the same modifications.

 

In fact, this is starting to sound very much like what happens with Blast as well (though there it seems more like it actually should be happening). This is after all also an AOE effect that triggers off of a regular attack, which also carries over Venomous Strike and Blinding Strike and Wounding Shot (though again, here only the Hobbling part and not the Wounding part), and profits from the accuracy bump of Flames of Devotion. Blast also carries over weapon procs like Dominate on the Soulbound Scepter whereas Black Path does not (I tried), but presumably Blast is tied more directly to the weapon it originated from and can reference its properties. It seems identical in every other respect, though.

 

Edit: ItemMods that improve accuracy also benefit the (normal) Black Path effect so it seems that to some extent at least the Black Path AOE does use weapon-specific StatusEffects. Perhaps the difference with Blast isn't that procs like Dominate don't apply at all, but rather that by lack of a primary damage component they simply can't actually proc in some sense. 

Edited August 3, 2016 by Loren Tyr