Buggy Steamroller
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Buggy Steamroller
Steamroller which is supposed to proc to take Rush off of cooldown sometimes does not even when its criteria have been met (within the turn limit the target of the rush dies.) There does not seem to be a consistent logic to this but it happens pretty regularly. I thought at first that maybe it was a limitation to how often rush could be reused in game without going through its full cooldown but that does not bear out. Sometimes it is after the first one, sometimes after the sixth and there doesn't seem to be a unifying factor that I can see. Figured maybe you all might know.
Re: Buggy Steamroller
I don't mean to dig up a graveyard thread, but this still seems to be a bug. Just wanted to add to it instead of starting a new thread.
I hit level 30 with a Cornac Berserker. I took Steamroller as my 1st prodigy.
Steamroller seems to only consistently auto-cool Rush if you do the following..
1) kill the person you rushed in 1 turn immediately after rushing them (ie: it's only giving me a 1 turn chance to kill them, not 2 like the prodigy description. Every now and then it seems to give me 2 turns. But, this seems to be an exception, not the norm.)
2) if I take some kind of non-physical damage, then it seems to disregard the auto-cooldown even if I kill them in 1 turn after rushing them. (EG: I rushed a wizard. Next turn, I click "Execute" to do deed. I had 90% attack speed, so his attack went first. He did something that gave me the statuses "Wet" and "Decreptitude Disease". My Execute ganked him. That ends the follow-up turn to my Rush. However, Rush did not auto-refresh, even though I killed him right after it.)
Like OP said, the prodigy is too inconsistent to be useful or reliable. The times I've needed it most (to run from wizard / archer to next one in a mass combat when my Call to Arms is cooling down) the thing doesn't seem to proc properly and consistently, thus leaving me screwed. The times it does seem to proc properly is when I'm solo'ing 1 enemy in a hall with nobody else around, I gank them right after my Rush, and it's refreshed. But... that's not really why I got the prodigy. I got it to help with mass combat crowd control when archers and wizards are being jerks.
To bug-trace, it's probably good that I give some character detail...
My guy has Berserker Rage, Precise Strikes, Daunting Presence and Shattering Impact sustained at all times. I'm sort of thinking the Steamroller prodigy has a time limit of "2 turns", but turns pass in "micro" amounts of time. Maybe my Precise Strikes (lowering my attack speed to 90%) are slowing me enough so that 2 turns for my guy are actually like 2.1 turns (?) ... so he has to kill them in the turn after a rush to get a proc, since if he did it in his 2nd turn it would be just a hair too much time to meet the "2 turns" cut off on Steamroller?
I don't know ... I'm just guessing here. Since characters have speed factors, they're used to determine who does what when in turns. But, maybe they also determine the actual amount of time a character takes to do something?
eg: if I have 100% attack speed.. then I can do 1 attack every turn. But, with 90% attack speed, maybe that means I can only do 1 attack every 1.1 turns. So, 2 attacks on my part would be 2.2 turns ... ???? and thus I'm not making the "2 turns" cut-off of the Steamroller prodigy to proc. And thus, with 90% attack speed, I HAVE to kill things in 1 turn in order to make it within the "2 turns" limit.
In other words... a characters attack speed isn't just used to organize what order people act in a turn, it actually counts as the time they take to do their action. If that's the case, then I guess Steamroller needs to either auto-scale the "2 turns" limit to be 2 attack turns the character can actually do based on their attack speed, or just clarify that the characters attack speed will impact how fast they have to kill something. EG: if my 90% attack speed makes it where I need to kill something in 1 turn to get Steamroller to proc, then the prodigy should clarify that in the description some place... otherwise we just get more folks saying it's bugged on here with they go "I ganked some guy in 2 turns, but Steamroller didn't proc (but my character has <100% attack speed.)
Likewise... if my attack speed is OVER 100%... would that extend the number of turns I could get to gank a person to proc Steamroller?
If I had an attack speed of 150%... it would take me 1 / 1.5 = .66 of a turn to hit something.... .66 x 3 = 1.98 ... I could theoretically pull of 3 attacks in under "2 turns". So, would that mean Steamroller would proc if I could kill the guy with 3 swipes in 2 turns after I rushed them?
Does this make sense?
If "turns" are a set unit of time... people are equating their attack to be "1 attack per turn". But, if attack speed skews how many attacks per turn you can actually do (by increasing or lowering it based on attack speed %)... then Steamroller should have a moving number in it's description that lets the user know how many ATTACKS they have to kill someone... not necessarily how many turns?
A character with 150% attack speed would have 3 attacks to kill something. My character with 90% attack speed would have 1 turn.
This is all based on speculation of how Steamroller works. But, I'm just using what I've seen while playing with it to determine that it seems attack speed some how impacts when it will proc... and while the prodigy description says a time limit of "2 turns", it should also have a parenthesis disclaimer that calculates how many attacks your character can do in 2 turns to better-inform the player of how many attacks they need to gank something in... not just how many turns .. and thus remove confusion and limit the amount of "omg, Steamroller is teh buggy!" posts that may get tossed on here.
I hit level 30 with a Cornac Berserker. I took Steamroller as my 1st prodigy.
Steamroller seems to only consistently auto-cool Rush if you do the following..
1) kill the person you rushed in 1 turn immediately after rushing them (ie: it's only giving me a 1 turn chance to kill them, not 2 like the prodigy description. Every now and then it seems to give me 2 turns. But, this seems to be an exception, not the norm.)
2) if I take some kind of non-physical damage, then it seems to disregard the auto-cooldown even if I kill them in 1 turn after rushing them. (EG: I rushed a wizard. Next turn, I click "Execute" to do deed. I had 90% attack speed, so his attack went first. He did something that gave me the statuses "Wet" and "Decreptitude Disease". My Execute ganked him. That ends the follow-up turn to my Rush. However, Rush did not auto-refresh, even though I killed him right after it.)
Like OP said, the prodigy is too inconsistent to be useful or reliable. The times I've needed it most (to run from wizard / archer to next one in a mass combat when my Call to Arms is cooling down) the thing doesn't seem to proc properly and consistently, thus leaving me screwed. The times it does seem to proc properly is when I'm solo'ing 1 enemy in a hall with nobody else around, I gank them right after my Rush, and it's refreshed. But... that's not really why I got the prodigy. I got it to help with mass combat crowd control when archers and wizards are being jerks.
To bug-trace, it's probably good that I give some character detail...
My guy has Berserker Rage, Precise Strikes, Daunting Presence and Shattering Impact sustained at all times. I'm sort of thinking the Steamroller prodigy has a time limit of "2 turns", but turns pass in "micro" amounts of time. Maybe my Precise Strikes (lowering my attack speed to 90%) are slowing me enough so that 2 turns for my guy are actually like 2.1 turns (?) ... so he has to kill them in the turn after a rush to get a proc, since if he did it in his 2nd turn it would be just a hair too much time to meet the "2 turns" cut off on Steamroller?
I don't know ... I'm just guessing here. Since characters have speed factors, they're used to determine who does what when in turns. But, maybe they also determine the actual amount of time a character takes to do something?
eg: if I have 100% attack speed.. then I can do 1 attack every turn. But, with 90% attack speed, maybe that means I can only do 1 attack every 1.1 turns. So, 2 attacks on my part would be 2.2 turns ... ???? and thus I'm not making the "2 turns" cut-off of the Steamroller prodigy to proc. And thus, with 90% attack speed, I HAVE to kill things in 1 turn in order to make it within the "2 turns" limit.
In other words... a characters attack speed isn't just used to organize what order people act in a turn, it actually counts as the time they take to do their action. If that's the case, then I guess Steamroller needs to either auto-scale the "2 turns" limit to be 2 attack turns the character can actually do based on their attack speed, or just clarify that the characters attack speed will impact how fast they have to kill something. EG: if my 90% attack speed makes it where I need to kill something in 1 turn to get Steamroller to proc, then the prodigy should clarify that in the description some place... otherwise we just get more folks saying it's bugged on here with they go "I ganked some guy in 2 turns, but Steamroller didn't proc (but my character has <100% attack speed.)
Likewise... if my attack speed is OVER 100%... would that extend the number of turns I could get to gank a person to proc Steamroller?
If I had an attack speed of 150%... it would take me 1 / 1.5 = .66 of a turn to hit something.... .66 x 3 = 1.98 ... I could theoretically pull of 3 attacks in under "2 turns". So, would that mean Steamroller would proc if I could kill the guy with 3 swipes in 2 turns after I rushed them?
Does this make sense?
If "turns" are a set unit of time... people are equating their attack to be "1 attack per turn". But, if attack speed skews how many attacks per turn you can actually do (by increasing or lowering it based on attack speed %)... then Steamroller should have a moving number in it's description that lets the user know how many ATTACKS they have to kill someone... not necessarily how many turns?
A character with 150% attack speed would have 3 attacks to kill something. My character with 90% attack speed would have 1 turn.
This is all based on speculation of how Steamroller works. But, I'm just using what I've seen while playing with it to determine that it seems attack speed some how impacts when it will proc... and while the prodigy description says a time limit of "2 turns", it should also have a parenthesis disclaimer that calculates how many attacks your character can do in 2 turns to better-inform the player of how many attacks they need to gank something in... not just how many turns .. and thus remove confusion and limit the amount of "omg, Steamroller is teh buggy!" posts that may get tossed on here.
Re: Buggy Steamroller
You're pretty much right on the money with the attack speed thing, except the calculation is a little more complex than that. It also factors in your global speed, and 'turn energy'. The simplified version is that any action which takes 100% of a turn will use up 1000 energy, which is the amount an actor with 100% global speed has to spend each turn. An actor with 120% global speed, say, would have 1200 energy. Those extra bits of energy add up to extra turn when they accumulate to another 1000 energy. There's a page in the wiki that will give you an in depth analysis of how this works; I would link it, but I'm not at a computer at the moment. For a very simple example: if you have a normal global speed and 10% increased attack speed, you would get a 'free' attack once after every 10 attacks.
These calculations affect everything in the game, and trying to give a calculation of how many attacks you have to kill the mob would be messy, and still not necessarily accurate. You could, for instance, Rush in and then use an ability that increases your global speed (such as Blinding Speed or Grace of the Eternals) and then have two, three or even more attacks to finish off the mob.
In short, I believe the prodigy is working as described, it is just the complexity of speeds that makes it seem like it is not giving you the full number of turns. The result, though, is that it is not a very useful prodigy, and, IMO, could certainly use a buff. Even if it gave you 3 turns, I still don't think it would be that great. 'Step Up', a talent in the Battle Tactics tree, is much more useful for helping with packs of mobs, and, of course, there are also the ever-useful Movement Infusions.
These calculations affect everything in the game, and trying to give a calculation of how many attacks you have to kill the mob would be messy, and still not necessarily accurate. You could, for instance, Rush in and then use an ability that increases your global speed (such as Blinding Speed or Grace of the Eternals) and then have two, three or even more attacks to finish off the mob.
In short, I believe the prodigy is working as described, it is just the complexity of speeds that makes it seem like it is not giving you the full number of turns. The result, though, is that it is not a very useful prodigy, and, IMO, could certainly use a buff. Even if it gave you 3 turns, I still don't think it would be that great. 'Step Up', a talent in the Battle Tactics tree, is much more useful for helping with packs of mobs, and, of course, there are also the ever-useful Movement Infusions.