WarcraftPets Forum

So I've seen tons of discussion on here about Nocturnal strike being a 50% ability that becomes 100% in darkness (blind), and then down to 90% due to the hit decrease for darkness, which explains why it sometimes misses. Shouldn't the same be said for spectral strike? The tool tip reads exactly the same

I was in pvp and my death adder was facing a Ghostly skull. Weather was "Darkness", which means that his Spectral strike is now 90% (100% minus 10% for hit debuff). I hit him with Blinding poison, reducing his hit by another 100%. That means that his hit chance is now negative 10% (100% due to darkness minus 10% darkness debuff minus 100% for Blinding Poison), and yet he hit me... and not just once. 3 fights in a row, he hit me every single time.

The 'always hits when X' overrides the death adder's accuracy debuff, even though it doesn't override a Darkness accuracy hit. It makes for a good counter to that damnable snake. Xufu's Spirit Claws does the same when it's Moonlight.

How about Steamvent? I just got hit for 710 from steamvent when a dancer was blinded by poison...?

Shot in the dark, but maybe Rain Dance? http://www.wowhead.com/petability=1062

Yeah, just saw that. So, he had a 30% hit chance and got it... Bah.

When an ability says 'always hits', I think it's 200% accuracy. Nocturnal/Spectral Strike reliably go through Blinding Poison when Darkness is up, and so does Blood in the Water when your pet is bleeding, and so does Spirit Claws when Moonlight is up.

That's certainly the way that it should work, Poofah, but if that's the case then how does nocturnal strike still miss when there are no other buffs/debuffs except darkness? Honestly, I think its very clever when people find these weird bugs and then work them into a viable synergy team. Props to them for ingenuity

Skavenged wrote:That's certainly the way that it should work, Poofah, but if that's the case then how does nocturnal strike still miss when there are no other buffs/debuffs except darkness? Honestly, I think its very clever when people find these weird bugs and then work them into a viable synergy team. Props to them for ingenuity

It misses N.S. if it's going against an Elemental. Elementals aren't affected by Blind (or the Accuracy part) from Call Darkness.

It depends on the order the effects are processed by WoW. After reading the examples in this thread it could be something like this:

1. base hit chance
2. buffs on you/debuffs on target
3. special conditions of the spell
4. weather effects

Nocturnal Strike under Darkness:

1. base hit (50%) -> 50% chance to hit
2. none -> 50% chance to hit
3. always hits (set chance to 100%) -> 100% chance to hit
4. darkness (-10%) -> 90% chance to hit

Spectral Strike under Darkness, blinded by Snake:

1. base hit (50%) -> 50% chance to hit
2. blinded by snake (reducing their hit chance by 100%) -> -50% chance to hit
3. always hits (set chance to 100%) -> 100% chance to hit
4. darkness (-10%) -> 90% chance to hit

It's easy, unless you are elemental you yourself will be blinded by the Darkness. I believe Kring is pretty close to how hit is calculated. There are of course other ways to blind an opponent, use that if you don't like being blinded yourself.

Skavenged wrote:That's certainly the way that it should work, Poofah, but if that's the case then how does nocturnal strike still miss when there are no other buffs/debuffs except darkness?

To be honest, I've never seen Nocturnal Strike miss when the opponent is properly affected by Darkness (ie not elemental). I use 3x crows for 2 of the beasts of fable so I have a pretty good sample size. I can't explain the disparity with peoples' reports, but I'm tempted to believe that Nocturnal Strike properly 'always hits' (ie is 200%-10% = 190% accuracy) if the target is blinded.

Kring wrote:It depends on the order the effects are processed by WoW.

Accuracy is expressed as a percent, but the math is all additive, so order of operations doesn't matter. Ie if you have Steam Vent (80%) under Rain Dance (80%+50% = 130%) and under Darkness (80%+50%-10% = 120%) and then your pet gets blinded by Flash (80%+50%-10%-50% = 70%). The tooltips are very honest/accurate about hit chance and they update with the application of buffs/debuffs, *except* in the case of these conditional abilities (Nocturnal/Spectral Strike, Blood in the Water).

Might as well just be something like:

IF AlwaysHitAffect THEN
Hit = 100%
ELSE
Hit = 50%(base accuracy) + any buff

IF WeatherEffect THEN
Hit = Hit - 10%

It's not only Darkness that gets applied last. Lightning damage get added last, Burning gets added last and so on.

Vek wrote:IF AlwaysHitAffect THEN
Hit = 100%
ELSE
Hit = 50%(base accuracy) + any buff

Interesting, this could also be possible. So 'always hits' in this case would be '100% hit, and ignore all other +/- hit effects'. If this is the case, then you'd expect Nocturnal Strike to always hit under Darkness, with Blinding Poison up. If 'always hits' is actually '200% hit' (like Laser), then you'd expect 200%-10%-100% = 90% hit chance in that circumstance.

The other fringe possibility is that Blind effects don't stack, in which case the 2nd example would become 200%-100% = 100% hit as well. So maybe Rip/Blood in the Water and/or Moonlight/Spirit Claws would be good to test as well (assuming they use the same 'always hits' code). I am not necessarily going to test this any time soon though.

I think Laser is an exception. That ability actually says 200% hit. Other always hit abilities probably sets a fixed 100% hit, which would hit under any other circumstance other than darkness/sandstorm.

What would be interesting is Laser under darkness with blinding poison... that should be 90% left, since I think that Laser works differently than the other always hit abilities that are often dependant on something else.

Another odd one to add to this discussion is that I've seen things that should have a 0% change to hit still hit. Moth balls with a flash debuff on them is the most obvious and easiest to see since it has multiple attacks each time. Shouldn't be hard to reproduce this one on the Air spirit.

Vek wrote:What would be interesting is Laser under darkness with blinding poison... that should be 90% left.

Yes, this would be interesting too. 200% accuracy is a sort of lazy/elegant way to make sure Laser 'always hits', which is why I suspect they just copied this functionality for Nocturnal Strike and the other 'always hits' abilities. Getting a significantly large sample size of Blinding Poison versus Nocturnal Strike is annoying, however, so it's not trivial to prove.

Kpb321 wrote:Another odd one to add to this discussion is that I've seen things that should have a 0% change to hit still hit. Moth balls with a flash debuff on them is the most obvious and easiest to see since it has multiple attacks each time.

This is almost certainly the same stupid functionality that Murk's Blessed Hammer has. Certain multi-hit abilities only apply accuracy buffs/debuffs to their first hit; the remaining hits will just use the base accuracy.

Well, I still say blinding poison is glitched to some extent. I just had an Anub hit me with Sandstorm when I'd applied blinding poison.

Hootstwo wrote:

Grrrrrr.jpg

Well, I still say blinding poison is glitched to some extent. I just had an Anub hit me with Sandstorm when I'd applied blinding poison.

I'd love to see the code they use

Yep, the calculations are whacked. Just had a fight where a moth hit me with Alpha Strike through Blinding Poison.

Hootstwo wrote:

Grrrrrr.jpg

Well, I still say blinding poison is glitched to some extent. I just had an Anub hit me with Sandstorm when I'd applied blinding poison.

Sandstorm says "Deals 370 Flying damage". Most other spells say something like "Crush the enemy, dealing 414 Humanoid damage." Maybe Sandstorm is not targeted.