Test Update 03/07/2023 - Patch Notes and Discussions

Imagine if Restless Ice aug and Banestrike don't stack.

Restless Ice is capped at level 120 anyway.

I did the exact same test, so yes. But as I tried to say before, rather poorly, this is not the spirit of what Banestrike was for when it was first introduced into the game. It started as melee DD only. and then a few years back it was converted to be a passive ability where it could also be applied to nukes and DoTs, caster things. It has never previously been applied to anything beneficial. Making that change now has nothing to do with lag reduction, either. The description in the AA box is terse and generic. I guarantee there are going to be a lot of follow-up questions from other confused players after this goes live, wondering where it works and where it doesn't. Does it stack with the Ice aug? An excellent question.

The more I think about it, the more I prefer the approach to just take Banestrike out of the game entirely. And what about that +2 base damage Kobold banestrike aug in the tutorial? That is now broken. And it's the tutorial, for goodness' sake.

Stop spreading misinformation. It was an activated nuke for all that hit mobs for damage based on slayer kills. They then made it passive to fire from any dot, nuke or melee round on a refresh interval based on your slayer kills. Bane damage from augs, weapons, etc is a totally different thing. This passive ability had all kinds of behind the scenes things going on that they wanted to reduce in the name of lag or server load.

Theoretically, it should, though I haven't had a chance to parse it out myself yet. Perhaps if anyone has, they could illuminate the community with their results.

Theoretically, the only potential stacking issue would be with the passive focus AA, but I believe this:

indicates that there are no stacking issues. Please correct me if I've interpreted you wrongly Kizant.

That's not how I remember it. Pretty sure from the beginning casters could use if they wanted. Look up RoF-era wizard guides and you'll see hotkeys with an /alt act line for banestrike mixed in.

Why would it be broken? It's bane damage, not banestrike. Bane damage significantly pre-dates banestrike (remember Seru and Ssra?) and is completely unrelated except in name.

There's no stacking issues.

They took a system that provided basically no benefit while inducing significant lag and turned it into something with a good benefit for everyone without any drawbacks. Plus you get an incentive to play more and finish additional achievements. This is the kind of change you want to see. It's crazy seeing all the complaints and misunderstandings.

The one downside, if you want to call it that, is that the changes appear to make it so good that it is now a must-have for min-maxers. What was previously largely considered a time-consuming vanity achievement is now something that all raiders are going to be expected to go out and farm.

The passive ability was implemented as a spell that proc'ed (it worked internally as a virtual summoned pet), and the data was/is on Lucy. Nothing behind the scenes about it. When it was still an activated ability, there were I think 31 different levels of the Banestrike spell, in part because it scaled in brackets to player level. Switching to passive was a huge performance saver at the time, and the new change is going to be a relatively small performance gain by comparison. I would really like to hear someone explain why recalculating base damage based on mob type is a big performance hit when it is coming from a spell and not when it is coming from a weapon or an aug or a disc.

Then again, this is a pointless discussion. The lag problems are a long, long way from getting resolved.

I think your assessment becomes reality next expansion. Think of the next 9-months as a nice short term gift while they stack while helping raid lag. A lot of us are now expecting we may not see the 10% aug Type 3 continue to exist (started in TBL and was refreshed in ToV)

There is no new calculation coming from mob type. The new passive gains are applied to your character as a whole and don't change base on what type of mob you are fighting. You get the achievements, it boosts your character regardless of what you are fighting. That's all.

I agree with this assessment. Just remove it and leave the vanity for the vanity. And that's coming from someone relatively close to completing these achievements. For the sake of vanity.

I am not sure about your estimate there as in the current form on live it has to do a check to see if the current target can be hit by banestrike based on the players achievements. Now it is just another focus effect added that doesn't do nearly as much work.

Unless banestrike was causing insane amounts of lag, this kinda feels like trying to use a shotglass to empty the ocean.

While I agree that overall, it's a nice change and will probably have SOME benefit on lag, it was probably low hanging fruit and won't make a noticeable difference. Kinda feels like it should be renamed to something else entirely because "banestrike" really doesn't fit any longer.

Obvious downside is that now everyone else will be able to rock my favorite title/suffix in the game and I wont feel special anymore.

The thing about performance improvements to software is that the same change can sometimes be almost nothing, sometimes a lot.

To way oversimplify Imagine working on paperwork (you are the CPU core), and you are working on a desk that can hold 4 pieces of paper (cache) if you are doing normal work that only needs 2-4 papers, you are fine, adding the 5th paper... well, suddenly you have to put whatever paper you used least recently back in the file cabinet, and then when you do need it, you have to walk back and forth to the file cabinet again... so your work slows down. Since your work is slow the other workers have to work harder, and only one worker can go to the file cabinet at a time, so suddenly ALL the workers get stuck away from their desk not working, waiting in line for their turn at the cabinet.

Hopefully eliminating the 'paper' of banestrike will pushback the boundary of when zones become unplayable a bit.

So there will still be times when the servers are overloaded, but it'll take more players doing more things at once before the threshold of collapse is hit.

Banestrike change is an excellent one!

Please ignore the complainers, especially the one(s) who have no idea how banestrike has historically worked or how it will be working with this new change.

- Removed tribute costs while in fast camp zones.

I like this change a lot. I keep forgetting to turn off tribute before I sit in the guild lobby all day, and when I do remember to turn it off, I always forget to turn it back on.

There's zero reason for them to get rid of the 10% augs since it's easy copy/paste itemization that everyone loves. And thanks to the work on banestrike there's now another SPA they have to work with for spells and armor.

Getting rid of the proc (and computationally expensive check) ... I think there's pretty much agreement that it's great for the game.

The question is what do the new percentages actually translate to when applied to everything. Because currently, Banestrike is little more than rounding error on a current dps parse. And DPG has implemented many a change that has been way overpowered at the start.

I am currently doing some testing with a 120 max aa paladin at 7% "slayer" swinging at a hall dummy on Live and Test (same Azia dummy, haste to 217% buffed only plus the 2h stance). I'll post full data tomorrow, but my early results indicate that the difference is rounding error in hour plus parses at least for straight melee damage.

They put stuff like that in all the time when they change backend stuff but not the actual UI file itself. I think it is mostly to point out so that if people start having issues with the window people are more likely to point to this change as when it started.