Furious Howl = bugged. Detailed information.

Lactose · 07/07/06, 8:00 PM

Repost of a post I made on the European Hunter forums. Post was originally created as something to link to in a GM ticket I made (Europeans don't have a Bug Forum, and are asked to submit a ticket about bugs), but some of you might find it interesting.

INDEX
Index
Test setup
Armor mitigation
Furious Howl: Auto Attack
- FH always active - working as intended
- FH active during shooting, expired before hit - working as intended
- FH activated between shot and hit - NOT working as intended
What should happen?
Furios Howl: Multi-Shot, Aimed Shot and macros - working as intended
Comments

TEST SETUP
Reinforced Bow (11-22 damage, 2.20 speed)
Rough Arrows (1.5 DPS)
5/5 Ranged Weapon Specialization (+5% damage)
3/3 Barrage (+15% damage on Multi-Shot)
Ranged Attack Power: 340
Damage range: 69-84
Target: Swine (level 3 critter) - found outside of Orgrimmar.

Disregarding crits for simplicity.

ARMOR MITIGATION
First, roughly determining armor mitigation.
Tested damage: 69-80

Armor reduces (at max) 84 reduced to 80.
84 * (DamageModifier) = 80
DamageModifier = 80/84
DamageModifier = 0.9524 (in other words, MAX 4.76% armor mitigation)

Damage range on bow, after damage modifier:
66-80

FURIOUS HOWL: AUTO ATTACK
Now the interesting part. Let's add Furious Howl to this.
Furious Howl (rank 4): Party members within 15 yards receive an extra 45 to 57 damage to their next Physical attack. Lasts 10 sec.

Damage range		Tested damage
117-131			123-127
118-132			126
119-133			124
120-134			128-132
121-136			127-129
122-137			123-128
123-138			No valid shots
124-139			126-131
125-140			126-137
126-141			127-137
127-142			130-133
128-143			136
129-144			No valid shots

Damage range: Damage range listed on character sheet while Furious Howl active.
Tested damage: Damage done while testing.
Note: 125-140 and 126-141 have the most accurate tested damage ranges; more valid shots were fired using these damage ranges than any other.
Valid shots: Shots were Furious Howl was active from moment of shooting until the shot hit (in other words, duration not running out during arrow's flight to target). Non-crit only.
This is done to check whether or not the damage is added to the attack (based on armor mitigation learnt earlier).

From the above, two things are learned:
- Damage is clearly added.
- DamageModifier is a bit incorrect (armor is lower than previously estimated).
A lower armor value than estimated has no influence on the conclusions of this thread.

After shooting, buff disappears. Next Auto Shot deals expected (regular damage range) damage.
Working as intended.

What happens if Furious Howl's duration runs out while arrow is in flight?
Same setup as above. Standing at max (41 yards) range, Furious Howl active, shooting arrow, having Furious Howl expire before arrow hits.
Latency reported: 70-80
Several shots done (to minimize chance of lag disrupting testing).

Damage while Furious Howl active, shot, Furious Howl ending, shot hitting:

Damage range		Actual damage
119-133			130
...
123-138			129-130
...
127-142			125-127

Not as many shots fired with this, but easily shows the damage bonus of Furious Howl being added if it's active at start of cast.
Working as intended.

What happens if Furious Howl becomes active after shot is fired, but before shot lands?
Same setup as above. Standing at max (41 yards) range, shooting arrow, activating Furious Howl, shot hits.
Tested damage range: 71-81

Obviously, the damage from Furious Howl is not added in this circumstance. However, the buff fades from you.
The buff is being consumed without being properly used. This applies to Auto Shot, Multi-Shot and Aimed Shot.
NOT WORKING AS INTENDED.

WHAT SHOULD HAPPEN?

Either
- Damage from Furious Howl added to shot in mid-air.
or
- Furious Howl not fading when damage not being added.

The second option would (ingame) be: Shot1 fires, Furious Howl activates, Shot1 hits (no bonus damage added), Shot2 fires, Shot2 hits (bonus damage added, Furious Howl fades).

MULTI-SHOT, AIMED SHOT AND MACROS

Using Multi-Shot, tested damage: 279-290
With Furious Howl active during casting, tested damage: 341-358
Notes: Every shot gains the damage bonus. This is fairly inaccurate (since the damage bonus varies), it only serves to prove that damage is added.
Using a Multi-Shot + Furious Howl macro*, tested damage: 339-354

Using Aimed Shot, tested damage: 710-721
With Furious Howl active during casting (and before), tested damage: 764-779
Note: Again, this is only to test if damage is added. It is.
With Furious Howl activated during casting, tested damage: 768-779
Damage is added regardless.
Furious Howl active at start of casting, duration expires before Aimed Shot fires, tested damage: 711-718
Damage is not added.
Using a Aimed Shot + Furious Howl macro**, tested damage: 766-770
Damage is added.

Using a Auto Shot macro***, tested damage: 129-131
Damage is added.

*/cast Multi-Shot(Rank 5)
/cast Furious Howl(Rank 4)

**/cast Aimed Shot(Rank 6)
/cast Furious Howl(Rank 4)

***/cast Auto Shot
/cast Furious Howl(Rank 4)

COMMENTS

Quotes are posts in the thread on that forum, might be interesting for some to read.

Hmm but just for my own practical consideration, you seem to say that using standard macros, we see a significant damage boost and it's not clear if we lost much. Would that be a sensible reading of your test, especially the last paragraph?

All the macros work perfectly... for openers...

The Auto Shot one is kinda limited in use. Most likely used only as an opener; how often do you hit Auto Shot during a fight?****

Aimed Shot... due to different cooldowns, these can very easily get out of sync. Especially for a hunter with points in Improved Aspect of the Hawk (since the proc decreases Aimed Shot casting time, leading to even greater differences in cooldowns). For openers, it works perfectly.

Multi-Shot... this seems one of the better choices to put it on, especially for a MM hunter. Their cooldowns are the same, so they can quite easily be used in conjunction. The damage bonus is added to every (so up to a max of 3) target; making the buff very viable in areas with multiple mobs. In addition, the Barrage talent boosts it, which most likely means the 8/8 Giantstalker bonus does as well.
However, binding it to Multi-Shot limits your buff use if you're unable to use Multi-Shot (for example for crowd control purposes).

However, there are also some problems:
Positioning. In most raid encounters (where I think wolves are widely chosen) you'll often stay at max range for various reasons. Avoiding debuffs, damage, etc. However, long range = longer timer for arrows to fly = greater chance for the buff to be wasted.
There's also the casting itself. Often, it's just not viable to manually activate it, and unless bound to a macro, the only other way is auto cast. Auto cast casts it every 10 second once it starts. It doesn't take any of your skills into consideration, and I'd imagine it going out of sync fast.
There's also some issues with some encounters. The twin emperors in AQ come to mind, every time they teleport my pet seems to cast the spell. I'm pretty sure this happens during other bosses as well, but I can't remember any specifics at the moment.

How much damage is lost depends a lot on playstyle, and when you're used to activate it. For some time, I had it macro'd to Multi-Shot. My usual opener in most raids would be: Auto Shot, Multi-Shot (+ Howl), Aimed, etc.
With this opener, I wouldn't be surprised if half of the howls were wasted. Auto Shot fires, Multi-Shot loads, Howl buff active, Auto Shot hits (removes buff), Multi-Shot fires. Buff wasted.

****Been thinking about it a bit, and I plan to macro Furious Howl to Auto Shot. As far as I remember, a macro with Auto Shot does not toggle it; only turn it on. This paired with Furious Howl should make me able to tap Auto Shot whenever I want the buff. Although it's more beneficial used with Multi-Shot, I actually think I'll be using it more with Aimed Shot, since it's a much more reliable way of not wasting the buff.
Will be interesting to try atleast...

Well I have it bound to multi and use it manually otherwise. But given that my weapon speed works, when multi comes up it is unlikely that an auto-shot is in the air. Also I don't have IAotH, so rapid fire is the only timing-modifier that may be a concern here. Not sure I can see a dramatic systematic lose of damage due to this though, give that it means that I _may_ but am by no means guaranteed to lose out on one furious howl every rapid fire is up and given that by pure chance the moment multi is due coincides with the second an autoshot is in the air. Gotta have to do the math if for my weapon that's even likely.

So it does seem to me that for myself at least this isn't something to lose sleep over. I'm hardly losing any DPS due to this bug.

I agree with weapon speed having a role in determining how much (if any) damage you lose. I seem to prefer slower weapons more each day :P

While I'm not losing much sleep over this (I don't really have much anyway :P), and I agree with the damage lost by this might not be overwhelming, it's still a bug I'd like to see fixed.
Not only for Furious Howl's sake, but pre-emptively for every similar buff, or anything that could work in synergy with it. There are already numerous buffs based on charges and cooldowns. Imagine a trinket, a new skill, a new boss buff (similar to Vaelastraz)... There's a major flaw in the mechanic, and if there's more than Furious Howl being affected by it (or even worse, imagine an encounter designed around a skill like this), it should be known.

While they might not have the time to fix it, making them aware of the bug should atleast prevent them from adding more to the problem.

Ami · 09/04/06, 4:30 AM

Thanks

Rabid Rob · 09/04/06, 2:44 PM

Ack... Well, that's a lot of wasted furious howl damage. When done with a multishot macro, I'm frequently hitting that at the end of a aimed-auto-multi combo so the previous two shots probably burn it off. Even set to auto, I like to stand as far back as possible, and that means a long hang time on my shots.

Thanks for the heads up!