Therefore, I have compiled this list of sustains and passives currently in the game that suffer from this bug. I hope it's useful to both developers and players. I believe it is complete, but it's certainly possible that I've missed one.
Poorly chosen color codes:
Bad - The talent suffers from this problem and is affected by a stat that changes frequently, such as the 6 primary stats, defense, spellpower, luck, resistances, armor, and other things that are frequently affected by buffs or equipment. Example: Lucid Dreamer's saves scale with mindpower.
Bad If Players Get It - Like Bad, but the talent is "NPC-only" or old-saves-only, so it's rarely relevant (but still relevant because possessors exist).
Bad With Mastery Items - The talent suffers from this problem, but is only affected by talent level. Changes to talent level reset sustains...unless they come from, say, a mastery bonus on an item. So you can abuse this bug if you have a mastery item (or, in some cases, one of the few items that grants direct bonus talent levels), but not otherwise. Example: Arcane Feed.
This problem does not occur with passives, which do reset upon all mastery and talent level changes. Yes, you could fix these specific talents by making sustains restart upon mastery changes.
Bad With Mastery Items If Players Get It
Provisionally Fine - The talent is almost Bad With Mastery Items but it uses raw talent level instead of real talent level. If changed to use real talent level, it will become Bad With Mastery Items, so it is risky to leave it as-is. Example: Quicken Spells.
Worse - Like Bad, but additionally cannot safely be auto-restarted because restarting it would have side effects. Example: Saw Wheels does a bunch of attacks, and resets its damage bonus, when deactivated.
Bad, Bad With Mastery Items, and Worse are all urgently important to fix. They are differentiated here only for the benefit of players wishing to take advantage of the bugs.
The list
celestial/chants-chants
Chant of Fortitude
Chant of Fortress
Chant of Resistance
Chant of Light
celestial/combat
Weapon of Light (melee_project portion only, damage shield portion is fine)
Weapon of Wrath
celestial/crusader
Righteous Strength
celestial/eclipse
Darkest Light (this is more of an active, so there's an argument that it's not an issue)
celestial/guardian
Retribution
celestial/hymns-hymns
Hymn of Shadows
Hymn of Detection
Hymn of Perseverance
celestial/radiance
Searing Sight
celestial/sol
Solar Wind
chronomancy/matter
Matter Weaving
chronomancy/other
Quantum Feed
Entropic Field
Carbon Spikes
chronomancy/temporal-archery
Perfect Aim
chronomancy/temporal-hounds
Temporal Hounds
corruption/blight
Dark Ritual
corruption/blood
Blood Fury
corruption/bone
Bone Shield (The number of bones isn't subject to this bug, but the regeneration rate of the bones is.)
corruption/demon-seeds
Corrosive Slashes
Shadowmeld
Blood Shield
corruption/demonic-strength
Abyssal Shield
corruption/rot
Infestation
corruption/sanguisuge
Absorb Life (why does this even exist?)
corruption/shadowflame
Flame of Urh'Rok
corruption/torment
Willful Tormentor (why isn't this passive?)
Overkill
Blood Vengeance
cunning/lethality
Blade Flurry (again, though, more of an active)
cunning/shadow-magic
Shadow Feed
cunning/stealth
Stealth
cunning/tactical
Exploit Weakness
cursed/endless-hunt
Surge
golem/arcane
Reflective Skin
psionic/augmented-mobility
Skate
psionic/dream-forge
Forge Shield (the Forge Armor bonuses)
psionic/dreaming
Lucid Dreamer
psionic/kinetic-mastery
Deflect Projectiles
psionic/nightmare
Night Terror
psionic/other
Beyond the Flesh (very specific: gems/mindstars combined with Finer Energy Manipulation mastery items).
Thought-form: Bowman
Thought-form: Warrior
Thought-form: Defender
psionic/psi-fighting
Augmentation
psionic/trance
Trance of Purity
Trance of Well-Being
Trance of Focus
race/shalore
Secrets of the Eternals
race/yeti
Resilient Body
spell/acid-alchemy
Acid Infusion
spell/aegis
Shielding
Arcane Shield
spell/aether
Pure Aether
spell/air
Feather Wind
spell/arcane
Arcane Power
Disruption Shield
spell/conveyance
Probability Travel
spell/divination
Keen Senses
spell/earth
Stone Skin
spell/eldritch-shield
Eldritch Infusion
spell/energy-alchemy
Lightning Infusion
Living Lightning (movement speed only)
spell/enhancement
Fiery Hands
Shock Hands
Inner Power
spell/fire-alchemy
Flame Infusion
Body of Fire (resistance and on_melee_hit only)
spell/frost-alchemy
Frost Infusion
Ice Core
spell/grave
Will o' the Wisp
Vampiric Gift
spell/ice
Uttercold
spell/meta
Spellcraft
Quicken Spells
spell/necrosis
Blurred Mortality
spell/other
Frost Hands
Necrotic Aura
spell/phantasm
Blur Sight
Phantasmal Shield
Invisibility
spell/shades
Frostdusk
spell/staff-combat
Defensive Posture
spell/stone
Body of Stone
Crystalline Focus
spell/storm
Tempest
spell/temporal
Essence of Speed
spell/wildfire
Burning Wake
Wildfire
steamtech/avoidance
Automated Cloak Tesselation
steamtech/battlefield-management
Saw Wheels
Grinding Shield
steamtech/butchery
Overheat Saws
Tempest of Metal
steamtech/furnace
Furnace
steamtech/other
Rocket Boots
Steam Powered Armour
steamtech/thoughts-of-iron
Molten Iron Blood
technique/2hweapon-offense
Berserker
technique/agility
Rapid Shot
technique/battle-tactics
True Grit has the bizarre property of updating its effects in callbackOnActBase, which still means they'll be incorrect (in the user's detriment) for most of a turn in which they take more than one instance of damage. Doesn't really fit into any of the classifications above, but seems bad.
technique/combat-techniques-active
Precise Strikes
technique/field-control
Slow Motion
technique/grappling
Grappling Stance
technique/magical-combat
Arcane Feed
technique/other
Precision
Momentum
Incendiary Ammunition (Alloyed Munitions penetration bonus only)
Piercing Ammunition (Penetration bonus only)
technique/shield-defense
Shield Wall
Last Stand
technique/sniper
Concealment
Aim
technique/strength-of-the-berserker
Berserker Rage updates every time the player acts, but their strength/dexterity could change more often than that, which is very slightly relevant if they have retaliating melee attacks as a possessor or adventurer.
technique/superiority
Onslaught (not that there's any reason to use it anyway)
Shattering Impact
technique/thuggery
Total Thuggery
technique/tireless-combatant
Pace Yourself
technique/unarmed-other
Striking Stance
wild-gift/antimagic
Antimagic Shield
wild-gift/call-of-the-wild
Meditation
wild-gift/cold-drake
Icy Skin
wild-gift/corrosive-blades
Corrosive Nature (acid resistance only)
Acidic Soil
wild-gift/eyals-fury
Nature's Defiance
wild-gift/fungus
Wild Growth
wild-gift/harmony
Elemental Harmony
wild-gift/mindstar-mastery
Psiblades
wild-gift/oozing-blades
Natural Acid (nature resistance only)
Unstoppable Nature
wild-gift/slime
Acidic Skin
wild-gift/summon-advanced
Master Summoner
Class summary
Finally, for the benefit of players, here's a summary of classes, coloured by the worst-bugged sustain or passive that they have. For example, Sun Paladin has Retribution, whereas the worst one Temporal Warden has is Temporal Hounds, and Doomed has no talents that suffer from this bug.
Categories that every class can get without escorts (Staff Combat, Mindstar Mastery, Harmony, Survival) are excluded for the purposes of this list.
Berserker
Bulwark
Archer
Arcane Blade
Brawler
Rogue
Shadowblade
Marauder
Skirmisher
Alchemist
Archmage
Necromancer
Summoner
Wyrmic
Oozemancer
Stone Warden
Sun Paladin
Anorithil
Reaver
Corruptor
Doombringer
Demonologist
Cursed
Doomed
Paradox Mage
Temporal Warden (but really Temporal Warden because nobody in their right mind takes temporal hounds)
Mindslayer
Solipsist
Possessor
Adventurer
Sawbutcher
Gunslinger
Psyshot
For addon developers: how to avoid and how to fix this bug
The game currently tries to (rather lazily) get around this issue by making sustains and passives reactivate every time something relevant changes. As you can see from the list above, this has not been successful, and furthermore no matter how much you increase the number of things that reactivate talents, it is fundamentally untenable because of interactions between sustains/passives and other sustains/passives. For example, Arcane Power affects spellpower, which in turn affects dozens of other sustains. So the order in which sustains reactivate matters, and players are incentivized to control it!
(Currently sustains reactivate whenever a change is made in the levelup menu, and passives reactivate whenever that happens or when mastery changes.)
Fixing this bug requires individually rewriting each affected sustain and passive. Some can be fixed by using existing features alone (mainly callbacks). Others would need to be fixed by adding new callbacks or special-casing them elsewhere (e.g. Armour Training has specific code in Combat:combatArmor() in order to make it work). Doing that might be the most practical solution; there aren't that many sustains in the game. By adding callbackOnGetResist, callbackOnGetArmor, etc. you wouldn't have to special-case many of the talents at all. And callbacks already support priority, so you don't need to worry about undefined order anymore.
It's hard not to notice that the common thread of suck between almost all bugged sustains and passives is the usage of Actor:addTemporaryValue() or Actor:talentTemporaryValue() to apply their effect. For example, Reflective Skin:
Code: Select all
tmpid = self:addTemporaryValue("reflect_damage", (t.getReflect(self, t)))However, this would be a significant refactoring so lots of things could go wrong. Additionally, it makes it easy to accidentally introduce a circular dependency between attributes. I would suggest instead deprecating these two functions for passives and sustains entirely.