Armourer reaction arts badly bugged

DominoDev wrote:

Would it be possible to add the option to have the crafting progress numbers presented in the chat window? Maybe as a new filter option under the Tradeskills filter. Just a simple message like "Tradeskill round: +23 progress, +14 durability" would be wonderful.

Oh oh, and while you are at it, moving the existing tradeskill progress messages (counters, criticals, etc) to their own filter instead of being under nearby-narrative would rock too, so we could throw all our tradeskill messages into a 'tradeskill spam' window without also removing non-tradeskill messages along with them

Silken@Butcherblock wrote:

Silken, when you're crafting you've got 4 possible results you can get each round. Critical success is +100 progress with no durability hit. Success is +50 progress, -10 durability, and is the most common result. Failure is -50 durability, no progress. And critical failure is -50 progress, -100 durability.

If you successfully counter an event, you're supposed to be guaranteed a success at least for that round, with a chance of a crit success. Just using the arts without an event to counter will not keep you from having a fail or crit fail that round. So if you used a +progress skill but got a fail for the round, you'd still have the -50 durability, plus whatever progress the skill used adds.

QA is going to get so sick of me...

Armorsmithing again, ran into another case of White Hot countered by Hammering resulting in a failed round. Also got White Hot countered by Strikes causing a failed round.

Seems like White Hot is the culprit so far. Of course, just because I haven't seen the failure with other events doesn't mean there aren't other events causing it. I won't rule out the fact that every time I've seen this, I've followed the counter by using Angle Joint and Steady Heat - maybe it's the combination of the arts causing the bug. Still, so far that's the only common denominator. Will update if I find different errors!

Edit: 9 levels, 43 incidents of White Hot Metal successfully countered, including the 3-4 tonight, 8-9 times that successfully countering the event resulted in a failure for the round. This includes once of using different follow-ups (Stoke Coals and Brittle Joint rather than Steady Heat and Angle Joint), and once using no follow-ups, just Hammering for the counter. But every single time did occur when White Hot Metal was the event requiring countering. Looks to me like White Hot Metal is the culprit. All /bug'd, hopefully Domino and QA will be able to figure it all out and have it fixed by the time I do my grind to 40 in a week or so.

Now I'm going to bed! ^_^

Lodrelhai wrote:

Thank you very much. That's a great explanation. I looked through all the faqs yesterday hoping to find such information. Next time I craft with my armorer, I'll watch again, From my notes yestereday, I see Success followed by -10d, +72p a couple of times. However, that is success, isn't it. It seems my crafter is just plain lousy on her own.

Lodrelhai wrote:

Thanks for continuing the feedback.

For me the failure can happen on any of the messages/icons to counter, so if you're mainly getting it on just one please count yourself lucky.

For the record,i t is *darn* hard to see the numbers as a fae smith, as I have to use a pretty severe up-angle to see the numbers above me.

Level 58 armorer, making various pieces of pristine forged cobalt melodic tonight. I did notice that I was getting a high number of fails, so I was using: bridle joint (+25 dur), stoke coals (+28 dur) and strikes (-5 dur, +22 progress) on many rounds, varying the order as needed by events.

So far, countering the more ciritical events has been behaving. {fingers cross}. On less-critical events, such as "Slight heat wave", a successful counter with the above 3 arts (Starting with stoke coals), resulted in two rounds of -2, +22 on several occasions. One successful counter of "orange hot metal" using those three arts (countering with stoke coals, then calling up the other two), gave me a -22, +something round.

Whether any of that is useful or not, I dunno. I rarely watch the numbers - I just know the perception is there, at least, that I'm fighting with my armor making a lot more than I struggle with other classes. (Which is part of why she's fallen by the wayside, level-wise, compared to my alt-army.)

NiamiDenMother wrote:

I'd recommend 1st person view rather than 3rd person, especially for any classes that are vertically challenged.

Since I finally ding'd 50, I noticed this twice during RO runs to get to 51. Both successful-counter-but-fail-round were with "Red Hot Metal".

Since others above have mentioned White Hot Metal and Orange Hot Metal, I wonder if it's something with the 50s Hot Metal line, or if it's just randomness masquerading as a pattern.


Oakleafe wrote:

Agreed - I'd originally tried crafting on my dwarf & fae as zoomed out, tilted up 3rd person, since it "seemed" like it should work better; but in practice, I have found it *much* easier to just stay in my normal 1st person and look up.

Mynervia@Guk wrote:

Just randomness masquerading as a pattern I'm afraid. You can see from a study on the first page of this thread that someone counted the failures against most of the events. I didn't bother doing a study as doing 8-9 rush orders per level I'm seeing so many failures I just "know" that it's everything.

You only saw two successful counters fail for a whole level, whereas I have 2+ successful counters fail per rush order! I'm very jealous of some of the RNGs you folks seem to have.

I'm starting to wonder if the problem isn't in the events/reactions, but something in the character data. My armorer had it only ever happen with White Hot Metal, and had it in T3, on average once per level. Others have it happening on multiple events and far more frequently. Some are reporting having it only within certain tiers, others across every tier. And QA/Domino can't seem to replicate it.

So... what if it is an error in the character data, or some wonky piece of code that slipped onto Live by mistake? Of course, if that's the case than it might not ever be found. But perhaps the characters who are having the problem can be copied/borrowed by QA and see if they have the problem with those?

The only other thing I can think of is to have someone from QA sitting right beside our chars while we craft and monitoring/logging every bit of data from the crafting session that they can.

Lodrelhai wrote:

Duskie, a templar, is my awful armourer. She just made it to level 40 and did manage to complete the one and only rush order she tried but just by one of her fuzzy kerra hairs. I won't consider her problem fixed until I can get through at least three without failing, unless I do something incredibly stupid to cause the fails.

Just FYI, started my armorer on the T4 grind today, and ran into the bug again. Filed a /bug report with the details, but it's pretty much same old. White Hot Metal countered with Hammering, followed by Angle Joint and Steady Heat. Round results -30 durability, +24 progress.

I'm sorely tempted to /testcopy with all my materials, run through a tier, delete from test, and repeat until we get a handle on this.

Edit: Ran out of feyiron, so I'm done for the night, but it happened 5 times total, including once that resulted in a critical fail for the round. Seems to hit me only on the White Hot Metal event. /bug'd all 5.

Bingo!

With many thanks also to Elspaeth over at EQ2traders who caught the thing in a log file, between the info here and there, today we have identified the culprit! It was mainly the White Hot Metal event causing the issues although there were some other irregularities particularly in the level range mentioned in this thread. We getting it fixed up and now we know what to look for, QA is now scanning all the other level ranges and tradeskill classes to make sure there aren't any other similiar issues too.

Many thanks to everyone who contributed time and data to tracking it down! Sorry it took so long, but we got that elusive little bug in the end, and learned how to catch similar ones in the future too!

DominoDev wrote:

Might i suggest a way to capture the +'s and -'s ever round to our chat log that in turn can be put to a log file. I "believe" that would have helped in identifying this. Then again i could be completly wrong. Anyways Great job finially getting this one nailed down!

DominoDev wrote:

I'm so glad you found the bug or bugs. Thank you and thank the others involved.
However, I'm not sure what level range you mean. A number of ranges were mentioned in this thread. My armorer was in tier 4 (levels 30-39) when she had most problems. but others were having problems in higher tiers. She is in tier 5 (level 45 now) and doing better, although it seems she'll never be as good a crafter as my sage and tailor.
When will there be a fix?
Again, thanks.

Woohoo! Success! Wish I'd known you needed the logs, I've got them for every instance of it. Though the log only shows if it's a critical failure...

Glad it got traced. I agree with Ohiv, maybe being able to capture the result numbers in logs would help in catching future bugs?

I just started crafting and no problems so far. I'm a lvl21 Armorer. The only problem I ran in to so far is that I got a work order in Nettleville for 12 Carbonite Kite Shields, but I don't have the option in my list of lvl 20 or 21 items. Please help. Did they get rid of the carbonite stuff? I do have all the "Steel" items available.

tmg74 wrote:

The carbonite kite shield is in the Armorer Essentials Volume 20, which you buy from the dude that stands just outside the trade skill places. The steel versions come from the Advanced Armorer Volumes.

It's very obvious too anyone having two toons of the same craft level ...
Armorer are much more likely to fail
or at least finish with less extra time.

I m a fae and never saw the numbers i just learned that the do exist. But the feeling is clear
even when i m doing a armor for a command i fight more with my armorer than with others.

Oustafiak@Storms wrote:

As someone who is leveling 9 toons through the same tier simulaneousy... um, no, it isn't.

My armorer tends to have less time left than my provisioner or tailor, that's for sure, but even when the reaction arts were bugged he was finishing faster and with more durability than my alchemist (who has a tendency to get as many as 3 crit fails in a row towards the end of a combine). That was in T3. Since starting T4 (post the bug fix), the armorer is smoking all my scholars in recipe completion times. The only reason they got to lvl 40 before him is I keep running out of feyiron.

My guild's full of people doing multiple tradeskills, and everyone has a different TS that is difficult for them. For me it's alchemist, for my guildleader it's armorer, another friend's jeweler has the unluckiest RNG on Norrath, and another guildie has a mutual hatred relationship with woodworking. I might buy that for some reason or other characters end up predisposed to succeed or fail at certain tradeskills, but armorers are not by default the hardest.