Iconic Projection goes Nuclear

[Ohmega]

So this just happened: http://imgur.com/a/zdQIJ

Sorry, don't know how to add images properly to these forums.

That is ONE iconic projection cast and it went absolutely mental and 1 shot everything in this fight pretty much.

I have absolutely no idea what happened. The only thing this reminds me of is when you spam queue Torments Reach when your Monk is Prone then they all go off at once. Doesn't always happen but things like this sometimes happen in fights but it never happened like this before.

Edit: I verified my game files not long ago, don't think it's corrupted files or anything like that.

Edited August 9, 2016 by Ohmega

[Loren Tyr]

Did you happen to have a pulsing AOE effect active at the time on that character (like Consecrated Ground)? It seems vaguely reminiscent of the Consecrated Knock Down issue (https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/88371-303-issue-with-knock-down-and-necrotic-lance/), where Knock Down (or Strike abilities, etc.) piggy-backs onto a concurrent Consecrated Ground pulse (or Black Path / Strange Mercy AOE, actually). It could also be a random glitch though, happens sometimes as well. If it doesn't happen again (I'm presuming this didn't happen before, anyway) it might well be that; if it does happen again, you should definitely post this in the Tech forum as well, so the cause can be sussed out.

 

To add images by the way, you can click on "More Reply Options" below to the right, there's an image uploader there.

[Ohmega]

No Consecrated Ground on my Priest. However, I've always got Shod-In-Faith on my Monk (if I have one) which triggers Consecrated Ground but I can't see it in the buffs, doubt this would cause a spell cast by another character to bug out like this but could have something to do with the Torments Reach stacking for the monk.

One of my monks has Rooting Pain talent... Can't think of any other pulsing AoE effects I had at the time. I'd casted Expose Vulnerabilities but I've cast it before and I think used Iconic Projection before aswell so, don't think it's that specific interaction but anyway.

Thanks for the post tips.

[Loren Tyr]

Hmm, that's probably not it then. It would have to emanate from the priest for it to happen in the same way, in any case. 

 

Oh well... let's just wait to see if it happens again. If it does, it might give some more clues as to why. And if it doesn't, problem solved as well

[Climhazzard]

Iconic projection has been able to hit multiple times since I don't know when, I'm sure it's unintended as it can heal multiple times per character too and the overall effect is very strong for a tier 2 spell.  I've been avoiding it's use since it can be very OP.

 

Torment's reach for monks is bugged in a somewhat similar manner, I think other skills/abilities may be hitting multiple times as well.  It's making the game somewhat easier than it should be, and making me hold off on my Trial of Iron runs until it hopefully gets fixed, but at this point it could be who knows how long until it's actually fixed.  Making me sad...

[Loren Tyr]

There are similarities, but I suspect that the underlying cause for Torment's Reach is different. What seems to be happening there is that the additional attacks from Torment's Reach also get the Torment's Reach effect applied to them and triggering a cascade through a line of enemies. What they'll probably need to do there to fix it is something like Carnage, which has a specialised implementation (Torment's Reach just uses the standard GenericAbility class) which prevents Carnage from triggering recursively. 

 

Iconic Projection doesn't have the same kind of structure, it's not reapplying attacks in some way that could set up this kind of cascade or recursion. What I suspect might be happening is that something goes wrong with the collision detection. It's basically a special slow-moving projectile which triggers an attack / heal effect whenever it intersects with someone. It seems that sometimes this goes wrong and characters are recorded as entering and leaving the projectile area multiple times in a row; perhaps the projectile position is somehow not updating properly and the game sometimes thinks that it is somewhere other than were it's supposed to be (and then when it returns, it perceives this as a new collision with characters it overlaps with). Not sure if it's that exactly of course, but does look like something like that. You can also kind of see it in the screenshots, the progression of hits appears to correspond with the physical position of characters; eg. Shiva does not get hit at first, but only later (I'm assuming this is the one in the wide-brimmed hat) and vice versa for Quincy (bottom of the melee, next to the Lion?) and Vanya (to the right of Quincy; she appears to have been Charmed or Confused as well, it's really not her day).

 

Exactly why this happened quite so spectacularly in Ohmega's game I have no idea. I have seen the same thing a couple of times with Rolling Flame, but that was only in the order of a double hit on a single enemy (and some of that might just have been bounce-related). Never seen it on Cackling Bolt, but that probably just moves too fast for that. In any case, I still suspect it is a glitch of some kind, unlike the Torment's Reach thing it only happens occasionally (and not nearly so much in one go). Which makes it difficult to reproduce and thus to fix, so it wouldn't surprise me if that's more something for PoE 2 (though I fervently hope they do a major overhaul of the code anyway, it's just not very structurally sound as is). Though hopefully they do still fix Torment's Reach, should be much easier to do as well.