Gid

For the last two weeks in a row on Maexxna our guild has had problems with titan flasks being pushed off the main tank during the fight. Since I am the main tank this has been especially vexing because I am deliberately stacking as many buffs as possible in order to ensure a kill on our first attempt. After it happend last week I started removing as many un-needed buffs as possible (by default I always got rid of things like spirit or arcane intellect but I also started to remove others like blessing of might and so forth). When it happend again this week I decided to look into the issue. The first post I found was:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...6&p=#post84316

The blue text there states that the buff limit is 32 with only 16 being visible, the remaining 16 are still applied but can't be seen until others wear off. This didn't exactly tally with my own experience. It seemed like ~20 or so buffs was enough to push off my titan flask. The next post I looked at was here:

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/th...s&T=624230&P=3
(post 60 on that page)

I'll quote it since it is fairly important:

Now this makes more sense. I noticed that just before losing my flask I got knocked out of defensive stance into some "unknown" stance (much like the Nefarian warrior shout used to put you into once it ended). When I re-applied defensive stance my flask vanished. It would also fit with my experience that it only takes ~20 buffs to knock a flask off rather than the stated 32. Certainly if you have 10+ hidden buffs from your equipment / stance that reduces the number of actual buffs you can have to the kind of figures you would see on a raid.

This may not be news for some people but I found it interesting and wondered if anyone else had similar experiences with losing flasks, being knocked out of defensive stance and so forth? As more equipment makes it into the game taking up hidden buff slots and the difficulty of encounters requires better and better buffing this seems like it is only going to become even more of an issue. I can't help but feel that if the 32 buff limit was an intended feature of gameplay then you would at least be able to see all of the buffs on you that counted towards that limit. Then you could at least more tactically choose which buffs to use and which items to wear.

 

Hej

our MT loses his flask every single time on Maexxna

happens nowhere else

 

Copernicus

The hidden buffs are any enchants on your gear and your stance.

I haven't seen any confirmation or debunking of set bonuses taking up a buff slot.

 

aarkh

This has happened to us multiple times at Maexxna and Patchwerk to one of our tanks who is slightly overly consumablehappy. Our experience was that the buff limit certainly is not 16, but it cannot be much higher than that either, so I was pretty confused when I first heard that blue claim of a 32 buff limit. This would certainly explain it and fit the picture.

 

berg

It is worse than it seems sometimes.

http://www.thottbot.com/test?e=Apply...rt2=&start=200

Look through some of the auras that you probably do not think are auras.

weapon specializations
shield specialization
improved revenge
defiance
3 for defensive stance (aggro, damage done, damage taken)

there are a lot. It gives a lot of insight as to how the game mechanics have been implemented to see that just about everything is done in this way.

That said the fact that a tank in T3 would have 4 buffs from their armor, 3 from def stance and another 4 or so from talents is somewhat troublesome. Consuming over a third of your buffs while being 'unbuffed' is not what one would expect.

At somepoint it seems like active and passive buffs will need to be segregated. Things like defensive stance should be sacred but they are not. We had our tank pop out of defensive on maex last night as well but it was at a relatively forgiving time so it did not wipe us.
All set bonuses

 

◊ Praetorian

This is really interesting -- excellent post. This needs to be fixed.

 

Copernicus

Except that the "Aura are buffs" post was wrong. He has on 8-piece Wrath, and isn't counting a lot of stats that come with that (Fire resist for example).

The hidden buffs are enchants and stances. I'm about 90% sure that set bonuses don't count in the buff limit, but I'd have to check to confirm. And there's always the possibility that a random set bonus would count.

There are usually 10 pieces that are enchanted (Helm, Legs, Shoulders, Chest, Wrists, Gloves, Boots, Cape, Main-hand, Shield/Off-hand). Throw in the stance, and that accounts for the approximately 21 buffs that a person can get before stuff gets knocked off.

Edit: I forgot the ranged enchant. 11 enchant buffs, 1 stance buff, leaving room for 20 regular buffs.

 

Mythic

So would this perhaps suggest a tank not, say, putting a scope on their gun, or would that not count similarly to an enchant?

 

◊ Praetorian

Ah, I misread it then. Yes, the basic stats on your gear aren't taking up buff slots or this would've been noticed long ago. It should be easy enough to test this, though, if we can put together up to 32 legitimate buffs, including every elixir imaginable, random stuff like unending breath, and so forth, and start with a naked warrior and see how many buffs we can get on. Then slowly put on gear, enchanted gear, set bonuses, etc., and see what gets pushed off and how the threshold changes. You should be able to confirm for sure exactly what is taking up slots, and how many./

 

◊ Praetorian

The problem lies not in the enchants, but what they do.

Enchant Weapon: Superior Striking (+5 Dam): http://thottbot.com/?sp=20031
This just modifies the weapon, and that's it.

Enchant Weapon: Agility (+15 Agi): http://thottbot.com/?sp=23800
This modifies the weapon to cast an infinite-duration spell: http://thottbot.com/?sp=23794

It's not even clear that +15 agi to weapon and +agi to, say, boots or cloak, would stack. I think they'd actually be two separate invisible buffs, based on what I'm seeing.

 

Northy

We've had similar problems as of late, but it only became a problem after 1.11. This might be pure coincidence, it's just ever since the patch, flasks have been dropping left and right. 2 weeks in a row one of our tanks has lost their flask on the emps, twice on faerlina and once on maexxna. It's gotten to the point where we're having tanks use the least amount of buffs required to ensure the flask remains.

Before the patch we believed it was impossible to push off a flask, now we know otherwise. Regardless, there should really be a buff prioritization system; it's just too expensive and demoralizing to keep losing them. Does anyone know if the order in which you buff has an effect on what may get pushed off first? Like if we cleared our buffs and then used flask, would it be the last to go, is it random?

 

berg

Recall the bug on test server a month or so back where you could trick the game into reapplying your item stats over and over by exploiting a bug with the repair all feature.

This would imply strongly that item stats affect your character differently than buffs do. People did that over and over and had absurd number if stats and resists. If those were considered to be buffs then it would have plateau'ed very early.

Looking through the aura table on thott I saw nothing that hinted at enchants or resists or stats being used to consume buffs. I definitely saw 3 seperate auras called defensive stance though and loads of auras for all of the talents that give +1% this or that.

you can also clearly see essentially every set bonus in the game sitting in the aura table. Set bonuses are without doubt taking up buff slots.

Auras are definitely consuming buff slots because we can see evidence of auras getting knocked off of players.

 

Gid

If this is indeed the case then it is bad news for the ZG head and leg enchants. Take the warrior version Presence of Might:

http://www.thottbot.com/?i=51866

If I understand it correctly this one enchant has 3 auras associated with it:

http://www.thottbot.com/?sp=24148

 

• Arawethion

The question is, would each spell take a slot, or would different copies of the same aura stack into the same slot?

Also, I doubt a blanket statement like "set bonuses don't count" is true. Knowing what we know from Thottbot and such about how things in this game are implemented, almost anything is an aura. It seems possible that any Equip: effect could work this way, really. 8/8 Wrath, for example, has to put a buff on the wearer giving him a chance to proc, I would think.


I guess it might actually be a good thing that we've never gotten around to bothering with the small buffs like Elixirs of Fort and stuff--we've never had this problem.

Answers to Moonkin questions:
0) Read the TTT/use the spreadsheet: http://elitistjerks.com/f47/t66856-moonkin_pve_dps/
1) Maintain high DoT uptime. Use WiseEclipse.
2) Nothing beats 2T8.
3) Yes, sometimes you cast many Wraths and no Eclipse procs. Deal with it.

 

• Arawethion

It would be very odd if it were random--you'd almost have to go out of your way to design that.

Most likely, it's that the oldest are the first to go. Since your Flask persists through death, and you have Def. stance up from the moment you rez, these will be older than all the buffs that get applied for a new boss attempt.

Of course, these are also the most noticable things to lose, so it may just be that other losses frequently go unnoticed.

What happens when you get popped out of Def. Stance? Do you wind up in no stance until you click one again? (and if you use default UI, do you get to see the ever-hidden Action Bar #1?)

Answers to Moonkin questions:
0) Read the TTT/use the spreadsheet: http://elitistjerks.com/f47/t66856-moonkin_pve_dps/
1) Maintain high DoT uptime. Use WiseEclipse.
2) Nothing beats 2T8.
3) Yes, sometimes you cast many Wraths and no Eclipse procs. Deal with it.

 

Gid

I wonder if +7 stamina on boots stacks with +7 stamina on shield but not with +9 stamina on bracer? Or whether they are all seperate auras?

As I mentioned in my post you go into no stance with an empty action bar in the same way you used to with the Nefarian warrior call. You have to click on a stance button to get back into one.

 

◊ Praetorian

This explains something we observed on a failed Patchwerk attempt a couple of weeks back. Tank #2 and Tank #3 were separated by 70 max hp, and we had a lot more healing assigned to #2 than #3. Suddenly, midfight, Tank #2's maxhp dropped by 100, and he dropped to the third slot in the HS priority list. The former #3 died shortly thereafter since he really didn't have the healing support to sustain that frequency of HSes.

The mystery? Tank #2 had no buffs on him that added 100hp. He was using chops for +25sta, and then standard other hp/tank buffs. None of them equalled 100hp. We couldn't for the life of us figure out what might have happened. But now I think that perhaps something pushed off either the +10sta aura associated with one of his ZG enchants, or the +100hp he had to his breastplate....

 

• frmorrison

Wow, this is interesting. It sucks that this Warrior has to click off buffs like Spirit/Int/Might just to keep his flask on, there should be buff priorities, just like debuffs.

8/8 Wrath puts a buff on the wearer when it procs.

DK - Ashbane Failure is the condiment that gives success its flavor.

 

Northy

I see where you're coming from, but im also certain that we've been buffed up prior to an attempt before flasking to ensure maximum flask time. There's no doubt we would of also noticed the loss of Fortitude (one of the tanks first buffs).

I also recall the tank being put into the empty stance on maexxna before losing the flask.

 

• Arawethion

That's kind of funny. Maybe people who have this problem often should populate that bar with Defensive Stance hotkeys (and maybe an emergency Flask hotkey?). It would be easy to do this with any barmod (for those who don't know, Warriors never actually get to see their "default" Bar #1, it's normally hidden in the default UI by #7, 8, or 9, depending on stance).

Answers to Moonkin questions:
0) Read the TTT/use the spreadsheet: http://elitistjerks.com/f47/t66856-moonkin_pve_dps/
1) Maintain high DoT uptime. Use WiseEclipse.
2) Nothing beats 2T8.
3) Yes, sometimes you cast many Wraths and no Eclipse procs. Deal with it.

 

Copernicus

Thanks, I knew that I was forgetting an enchant slot, but being a caster we don't enchant our ranged.

Set bonuses do not take up slots. Random stats or special things on gear do not take up slots.

Item enchants and stances are the invisible buffs. That leaves 20 slots for the typical tank to use with enchants. (12 slots used by Defensive Stance, Enchants on 7/8 armor pieces, Back, Weapon, Shield/Offhand, and Ranged).

Buffs use a first-in first-out policy for removing them. Most of the time that's going to be the Flask (because it's the only buff on someone when they're dead) followed by their stance (applied as soon as they rez).

 

• Arawethion

I don't know anything about Maexxna--what makes her so particularly problematic?

Answers to Moonkin questions:
0) Read the TTT/use the spreadsheet: http://elitistjerks.com/f47/t66856-moonkin_pve_dps/
1) Maintain high DoT uptime. Use WiseEclipse.
2) Nothing beats 2T8.
3) Yes, sometimes you cast many Wraths and no Eclipse procs. Deal with it.

 

Gid

As it appears you have tested this how do the ZG head and leg enchants work? Is it just one slot for one enchant or do they take up multiple slots? The reason I ask is that as per my earlier post the spell for the warrior enchant:

http://www.thottbot.com/?sp=24148

Has three seperate aura applications.

 

• Arawethion

How exactly have you concluded these things?

Answers to Moonkin questions:
0) Read the TTT/use the spreadsheet: http://elitistjerks.com/f47/t66856-moonkin_pve_dps/
1) Maintain high DoT uptime. Use WiseEclipse.
2) Nothing beats 2T8.
3) Yes, sometimes you cast many Wraths and no Eclipse procs. Deal with it.

 

Kerruul

The problem could mitigated somewhat if they switched from using a queue (First-in First-out) system for buffs to a stack (newer buffs get bumped first.) Then a tanks could pop his flask and defensive stance and it'd take a ton of buff spam to knock them off. It might mean crusader would knock off healing way or regrowth, but that's far more acceptable than regrowth knocking off a flask. (And remember regrowth, rejuv, renew and so forth are all buffs.)