I've noticed a recent and interesting bug regarding channeler pet health and temps that increase Pot/CB. When using the prestige endline, or Salvo, the increasing pot, or uplifting pot procs, while your pet is taking intercept damage, the pet gets the increase in max health but current health doesn't update. For anyone who plays a channeler or knows how the channeler intercepts work, you can see the issue: As your pet's current health gets lower, it begins to intercept less. As a MT healer, this is a massive problem considering when I cast my potency increases, my pet's max health doubles, but leaves my pet at 50% current health. Making potency charms worse than useless. I don't think that's an intended mechanic. Video shows bug in action, have been able to replicate it 100% of the time.
^^This. KKTHNXBYE. Tired of him slacking off and claiming he's broken. <insert constructive comment that leads to this being fixed in an expedient manner>
Update: Just tested with two people using potent cores, same bug. Group-wide pot/cb temps also cause bug to occur.
But please, if you try to fix it, do it properly, not half-***** by breaking something else. Do not **** up the channeler.
This is a problem because of the instantaneous nature of the jumps and their short lived duration. By "fixing" the pet to neglect these boosts, it may indirectly nerf it in the future (e.g. if it is changed to only use the channeler's potency, truespirit's would be lost). This makes it difficult to fix, as buffs must be inspected case by case. Alternatively, one could change the pet intercept thresholds (e.g. % based to # based), but that becomes more difficult to define... and likely would need to be revisited frequently to ensure that it is functional for current content. Any unanimously cleaver ways to fix it now and forever? I'm stumped.
The problem is more the nature of the pet intercept mechanics themselves. If I'm correct, the REASON it doesn't update current health to max health has more to do with the pet receiving damage as their max health increases. The way I suspect damage happens is the game says, "Okay, it's at 2mil hitpoints, it got hit for 300k, so that equals 1.7m!" The issue is, it happens at the same time as the max health gets boosted up to 5 mil! So the game changes the pet's state to 1.7m and doesn't take into consideration what the max health is because it's not doing an equation so much as it's updating the current health state. Of course, this is all speculation based on me giving maybe a grand total of 2 hours of thought over the past month.
Would it be possible to just have the pet heal itself to keep the same % health any time its max health changes?
It might be a possibility. This is relatively recent too, it was working before when I was using The Fabled Lord Vyemm's charm last expansion. I'm not sure what might've changed since then. Or perhaps since I wasn't jumping from 950 pot to around 1500 I didn't notice it. I think changing the % to # would be devastating to the class.
This is in same relation to a long time ago reported bug (and never resolved) about potency debuff's fading. When a debuff fades, it essentially does the same thing. Our potency goes up, pets max halth goes up, current health stays the same (i.e. pet goes from 100% to 60% health), and thus now the pet is intercepting for LESS (untill i heal it back up to 100%) than it was while the debuff was running/on you. The simple solution would be: Anytime the pets max health changes (up or down), slide the current health% along with it. So when the pets health goes from 3mil max HP and is at 90% health, and jumps up to 8mil max health, current health HP should stay at 90%, not drop to 40%. Also.. pets current health % will drop tremendously anytime a druid enters your group, and/or gets in range of you after being out of range (and buffs being applied). But, this has been LONG reported, since last expansion i believe, ans yet to be either resolved, OR EVEN addressed formally.
Best solution so far. It may allow for "some pretty stupid effective-temps" but considering those already exist (e.g. equilibrium, swindle fate, cyclone, etc.), and you'd need a group/raid to coordinate for it, I don't see the harm in doing it this way. It provides the same net as shaman casting wards with the same bonuses. This difference is this is a passive benefit rather than an active one, which are certainly more powerful, but as player skill increases the difference between the two diminishes as well (and I imagine the skill difference to be small in situations where this type of scenario applies).
I felt it appropriate to record the bug in action so that everyone had the evidence there and there were no "unable to replicate" excuses. The whole reason for temps is to have ridiculously stupid numbers for a short period of time. Temp into VC, temp into shaman wards, ect. Once potency wears off you're back to healing the pet a ton. I think the longest pot temp lasts about 30 seconds, and that would be on the "Growing Power" proc. I've seen Uplifting Power cause some issues until it hits 20 stacks, though. Of course, it doesn't happen when you're out of combat either, just when pets take damage. I'm wondering if the reason it hasn't been changed is because it was a massive oversight during development and they'd have to change everything with how received damage works globally. Then again, it doesn't work like that when you buff the tank's max health either, so I have a feeling it's an intercept mechanic that may be a bit faulty. But don't quote me on anything, I'm no expert.
I was shooting some ideas with guildies a bit earlier today. Why not make it work like Plane Shift on the conjuror pet? I haven't tested to see if the same thing happens (pet takes damage during hp change) but if the same thing doesn't happen, then perhaps that may be a viable solution? It's not like it heals the pet back to max health, no new mechanics added, ect. Just tested; Plane Shift does not experience the same issue, I wonder if it's because it's a percentage-based max health boost instead of whatever the channeler mechanic is.
the problem is your looking at it strictly from a % value when it really is a number value.. let me explain random number amounts here btw say starting pet max hp is 6mil and its at 50% hp when you bump the max hp up from temps and potency (im sure you have a pet heal running at same time) your pet will gain more HP back per tick of heal/epic.. so while you are seeing oh crap its @ 3mil hp and only healing up 5% that is 300k hp that your pet can possibly intercept (while a dimished portion of that 300k based on actual % of pets hp at the time) so you temp up your and pets max hp jumps to say 8 mil ( its for easier gap number not saying you are gaining 2m max hp off temps) so now instead of the 5% tick taking you from 3mil to 3.3m its taking you from 4mil to 4.4m meaning that while you are not seeing the pets hp move in perctanges it actually just gained an extra 1.1m available intercept over the 300k without temp..... while the % of intercepted damage lowers based on % of max hp available to pet after the first 5% heal it will take a bit longer for the pets hp to get down to 50% based on the actual numbers available... its not a perfect system nor explanation but it definetely explains why channelers arent at the top of their classes to look at
Ok, while i don't disagree with what you are saying, i totally GET the current mechanics. What we are saying is this is not how it SHOULD be. The problem then arises because the amount of damage our pet intercepts ALSO scales with it's current health PERCENT. So if it were to absorb 500k damage (completely random arbitrary number) when it is at 5milhp/5milhp, then its current max health goes up be it from a buff or debuff fading (but its current health stays the same) and is now at 5milhp/8milhp, it now has the same CURRENT health, but is now only going to intercept 300k damage from that same exact hit. THAT is the problem. If the amount a pet intercepts did not change with current PERCENTAGE of health, then this would not be an issue, but it does. Imagine you are a Templar, or a druid, or a shaman. Imagine if after you get a pot or CB buff (or debuff fading) your heals were 30% less effective and remained this way until you stopped healing your group for the few seconds it takes you to recover from that 30% healing loss. Remember, its not just the 30% healing loss, its the time that you now have to spend recovering from that loss (in our case, healing the pet), and you are then NOT HEALING YOU GROUP. Imagine.... your shaman wards now do 30% less. Your regens now do 30% less, your reactives, now do 30% less.. all because you got BUFFED (or a debuff faded.) Not very sexy.
yeah but look at it this way.. your pet is at 50% no buffs it intercepts 500k and drops 5% to the next threshold of diminished intercepts... you temp up and with the bonus hp it recieves and max hp it now can intercept 900k to the next threshold of diminished intercept... again arbitrary numbers but i was channeler main for a very long time and still occasionally use mine in raids.. i build wdb over CB/POT and most of the time i dont have too many issues balancing the hp of my pet with the diminishing returns if i time the temps and heals correctly.. honestly my only real issue with channelers is the time to actually heal outside of the new prestige ability avg cast on channeler heals is 1.5 seconds i just believe more testing should be ran and compare the actual hp gains/max hp gains by temping in combat and not just the %'s before calling this a bug
