UberFix 1.06 [1/18/2012]

By miriyaka on November 28, 2010 11:03:32 AM from

miriyaka

Join Date 11/2008

The UberFix is a compilation of bug fixes for Demigod version 1.3.

OFFICAL DEMIGOD PATCH NOTE:
Demigod must be updated to version 1.3 or higher to take advantage of several of the fixes contained herein. Additionally, any bugfixes found in Demigod Patch 1.3 have been dropped from the UberFix code for purposes of maximum compatibility with version 1.3, so using an older version of Demigod with this release of the UberFix will re-introduce many bugs.

To insure that the latest Demigod patch is installed, enter the Multiplayer screen in the main menu, choose Internet, and log in with your Impulse username and password. The game will be automatically patched.

Download v1.06:

http://www.box.com/s/hdsoycixo3p8f5fs82aj

Installation Instructions for Demigod Mods in Archive Format:
If you have downloaded the executable, it should place the files automatically.
If you downloaded the zipped version, use the following instructions:

1) Locate your Demigod mod directory. This will be \bindata\mods, within your Demigod install folder. The default location for this is C:\Program Files\Stardock Games\Demigod\bindata\mods.

2) Extract the mod archive directly into this folder. If you are using a program like Winrar or 7zip to extract the archive via a drag action, make sure you choose the first option to extract files directly into the mods folder, rather than the second option to extract into a sub-folder with the same name as the archive file.

3) The result should be a folder within \mods called e.g. 'UberFix 1.05', containing several files and sub-folders. If instead you see only one folder with the same name as the archive (e.g. 'Uberfix105') and an 'UberFix 1.05' folder within, then you chose the wrong option when extracting, and will need to move that sub-folder back one level into the mods folder, or delete the result and re-extract the archive into \mods without specifying a sub-folder.

To enable the mod, run Demigod, select the Mod Manager, select the UberFix, and click enable. If the mod is properly enabled it will show up in the right pane of the Mod Manager screen.

To delete a mod, simply delete the that mod's individual folder in \bindata\mods\. Do not delete \bindata\mods unless you wish to remove all mods!

New in v1.06:

-Created new UID
-Fixed code error in Regulus' Vengeance skill, now properly does a metahit
-Fixed code error introduced with previous Iron Walkers fix
-Fixed Theurgist's Hat description, it is a weapon proc, not an armor proc

Version History

v1.05

Minion and Reinforcement Base Armor Not Applied Until Armor Is Buffed
Units with a blueprint base armor value (most idol summons and heavy reinforcement units) will now correctly have this armor value applied. Previously, this value only took effect once the unit was affected by some other armor buff, remaining if that armor buff was removed.

Regulus Maims Allies When Using Universal Gadget
The previous fix for Regulus' self-maiming already solved the unreported issue of self-maiming via potion use. The fix has been expanded to insure against any maim application on negative damage (healing) as well as on allied or self damage.

All Valor Flag Bonuses Lost When Enemy Valor Flag Is Captured And Lost
This was accidentally introduced in the 1.04 release with the ArmyBonus stacking protection fix. This fix now always allows stacking unless the buffs the ArmyBonus contains have the REPLACE stacking flag.

Miscellaneous Small Fixes

Gloves of Despair now show their existing 8% attack bonus

v1.04

Ranged Demigod Attack Stutter
Ranged Demigods (other than Regulus in Angelic Fury) would have their attacks repeatedly interrupted due to constant stop and start while chasing a slower target, effectively penalizing greater speed. They are now able to successfully attack periodically in this situation, though not from a standstill. This is intended, to preserve the advantage bestowed by Regulus' Angelic Fury lock-on bonus.

Queen of Thorns Extreme Rate of Fire
Related to the above fix, Queen of Thorns will no longer be able to attack far more rapidly than should be possible while chasing a target or when stuck on map geometry.

Queen of Thorns Compost Uses Incorrect Buff Levels And Adds Infinite ArmyBonuses
Despite using a similar buff counting method to Oak's Soul Power, Compost started at 'rank 0' internally and caused the level 6 buff to go unused regardless of skill rank and compost level. It now uses exactly the same calculation method as Soul Power.
Additionally, it would add an ArmyBonus every time it gained or lost a level, potentially causing the game to process hundreds or even thousands of ArmyBonuses and their associated buff add/removes every time one of Queen of Thorns' minions was summoned or killed. All buffs and ArmyBonuses added by Compost are now correctly removed, which should significantly reduce the sim overhead of this ability.

Unclean Beast Ooze Suicide
Ooze is now completely incapable of causing suicides. Unclean Beast will be left with one hitpoint in any situation where Ooze damage occurs in the same tick (but just after) any other damage event.

Rook Shoulder Weapon Stuck And Illegal Targets
These weapon addons should no longer become fixated on a single target that is out of range or is no longer visible, and should be unable to fire on non-structure targets that are not currently visible. Structures in the fog of war can still be attacked as intended.

Rook AI Movement Stutter
This was caused by the high rate of fire of Rook's arrow towers. Their ROF has been quartered and damage quadrupled, for the same overall DPS. Poison chance and duration have been increased slightly to give the same chance per second of poison activation, as well as the same chance per poison cycle of renewal under consistent fire.

Torch Bearer Permafrost I Debuff
This aura level is now in-line with all other levels, at -5% ROF from -3%.

Torch Bearer Frost Nova Slow Duration
The snare duration for this ability now takes into account the duration of its freeze, each level providing a full 5 seconds of slow post-unfreeze as the description indicates (instead of as little as 2s at level III).

Oculus Ball Lightning Produce Nightwalkers/Spirits On Death
Due to the disposable nature of Ball Lightning (particularly with Explosive End), this caused an extremely exploitable level of synergy with Oak and Erebus allies, and can safely be inferred as unintended and a consequence of Oculus' poor testing.

Oculus Blast Off! I Radius
This ability level is now in-line with all other levels, at 6 radius from 3.

Sedna Horn of the Yeti IV Buff
Sedna's Yetis will now correctly receive the level IV buff with this ability. Existing Yetis now also receive the appropriate level of buff upon ability upgrade, as was the case with Shamblers and Entourage.

Absorption Refresh On Addition/Removal
Shield buffs such as Bramble Shield and Groffling Warplate will no longer cause all related buffs to be fully recharged any time one is added or removed. Additionally, absorption damage float text is now only displayed for both involved parties (like all other damage float text) and displays the amount of damage done.

Illegal AI Area-Targeted Ability Lock-on
The effect location of area-targeted abilities e.g. Hammer Slam will no longer illegally follow a moving unit whose position the AI chose for a target location.

Ability Tooltips Display Unmodified Cooldown Time While Cooling Down
The correct total cooldown time is now always shown in all ability bar tooltips. Skill sheet and inventory tooltip cooldown times remain unmodified, as intended.

Map Domination Voice-Over On Loss Of Map Control (Second Attempt)
The map domination voice-over now correctly activates on flag capture for the team gaining map control any time they capture a flag above the domination threshold. In addition, the map domination threshold is read from game settings instead of being fixed at 75%. This fix was absent from the released 1.03 code, despite being listed in changelog.

Trebuchet Damage Unaffected By Tower Strength Citadel Upgrade
The tower strength upgrades will now affect both Fort-upgrade Trebuchets and flag-controlled Trebuchets.

ROLLOVER DATA ERROR Or No Rollover On Flag Mouseover
Flags captured by the enemy team behind the Fog of War should now always display the correct rollover information. This issue was caused by an engine bug related to non-visible unit replacement and could not be directly fixed via Lua. Fortunately, a workaround involving giving the opposing team momentary 1-radius visibility on any captured flag to allow the engine to report the correct flag unit to the rollover system seems to have resolved it in practice.

Miscellaneous Small Fixes
Cosmetic changes (thanks to Lord Orion for finding most of these):

Compost and Soul Power now show their current level in the buff icon (thanks to Ptarth for the IV-VI Compost icons)
Torchbearer's mode-change buffs now show the correct names
Warlord's Punisher now uses the correct cast animation for its cast time
As noted above, absorption damage float text now displays the amount of damage done in a different format than normal damage float text, and will show critical hits in yellow. Shielded minions will show absorption damage float text to their demigod as well.

Small functional/internal changes:

Demon Assassin's Warp Area ability now has a pre-cast check that prevents it from being cast when no targets are in range (it has no range ring, and unlike other instant-cast area abilities, does not work on a variety of target types)
Regulus can no longer Maim himself with self-damaging abilities (this only affected mod items)
Made several changes to the AIBrain functions RemoveArmyBonus and AddArmyBonus to prevent endless ArmyBonus stacking (which carries a fairly heavy sim performance penalty in extreme cases e.g. vanilla Compost)
Ability damage now has the CanEvade flag set to false by default. This is the intended functionality, as all abilities other than Unclean Beast's Venom Spit specifically disable this. Practically speaking, in vanilla Demigod this only affects Spit damage-over-time, which can no longer be inexplicably dodged.
Wyrmskin Gauntlets' ranged on-hit chance is now in line with every other ranged on-hit chance (10% from 8%, 66% of melee chance)
Weapons with a blueprint-specified DamageRadius can no longer have their splash damage reduced unless the buff doing the reduction is flagged as a debuff. This was necessary to keep the Tower Strength citadel upgrade from reducing the splash damage of Trebuchets.

Feature Additions
Mod UI texture/icon support has been added:

Any .dds files in your mod folder within /textures/ui/common will have their path relative to the mod folder cached in a table that the UIFile function looks at when assigning most non-background, in-game UI textures. This can be used both for adding and overriding existing textures without having to use relative paths. This (along with the mod-folder doscript hook included) allows you to change the name of your mod folder between versions without having to update any of your code.

For example, the path:
/mods/mymod/textures/ui/common/abilities/dgqueenofthorns/newqueenclose.dds
Would override the existing file:
/bindata/textures/ui/common/abilities/dgqueenofthorns/newqueenclose.dds

Adding a new file:
/mods/mymod/textures/ui/common/abilities/mymod/myicon_01.dds
Would let you assign this icon to a buff or ability the same as you would an existing icon in that relative path, by setting its blueprint's Icon field to:
'mymod/myicon_01'

This affects any UI texture calls that use UIUtils.UIFile, including buff and ability icons, shop tab icons, and many UI window elements.
As UIFile only returns paths within /textures/ui/common, it does not affect any files outside of that path, and there are quite a few files within that path that do not use UIFile. Expanding this support to all of these files would require hooking every UI creation function that ignores UIFile and directly assigns a texture path, which would unfortunately involve 30+ file hooks and upwards of a hundred destructive function overrides (as most texture path variables are declared local within a function).

Several new BuffAffects have been added for use by mods:

EnergyAdd: Functions like LifeSteal, adding energy based on a percent of damage done (works on grunts and minions)
EnergyLeech: As above, except that energy is stolen from the target based on a percent of damage (demigods only)
EnergyDrain: A one-off application of EnergyLeech, like a normal negative Energy.Add buff that transfers between demigods

Additional Sync variables for displaying unit information in the UI have also been created, in addition to those from 1.03 (note that some of the associated buffs are currently unused in stock Demigod):

New BuffAffects:

EnergyAdd
EnergyLeech

Existing BuffAffects:

Absorption
AbsorptionMult
MagicResistance
MissChance
Invincible
StunImmune
DebuffImmune
BountyGivenMod
BountyReceivedMod

Weapon BuffAffects:

SplashMult
DamageRadius
FiringRandomness
MetaRadius
MetaAmount

Note: The secondary weapon stats and associated UI hooks from 1.03 have been removed, and replaced by an entirely sim-side system where each Demigod tracks the stats for all of its main weapons and updates the primary weapon sync variables any time its weapon/mode is changed.

Several other internal changes and additions have been made to facilitate easier and more non-destructive modding of BuffAffects. See the comments in /hook/lua/sim/BuffAffects.lua for details.

v1.03

Knockback Kill/Damage Credit (Ptarth)
Creeps killed by knockback damage (e.g. Post-Mortem, Ring of Divine Might, etc) now correctly give a share of credit for their death to the instigating demigod, as well as contribute toward that demigod's cumulative damage statistics.

Lord Erebus Poisoned Blood (Ptarth & Mithy)
Updated so that the correct audio cue and visual effects are now played when Erebus or his allies are healed by his poisoned potions.

Instant-Cast Item Activation (Ptarth & Mithy)
The fix for Sludge Slinger and Parasite Egg not activating unless the activating demigod was facing its target (present in 1.02) was not taking effect due to an error in implementation. This fix is now fully functional, and is also now applied to Deathbringer's silence ability.

Ironwalkers and Desperate Boots Persistent Buff (Mithy)
The conditional buffs for these items are now properly rescinded when the item is removed from inventory by any means.

Ironwalkers Always-On for Rook (Mithy)
The item's speed condition now compares against a percent (90%) of the demigod's base speed, for a similar activation threshold (<= 5.4, from 5.5) for most demigods.

Late Map Control Voice-Over (Mithy)
The map control voice-over now correctly activates any time the dominating team captures a flag with over 75% map control, rather than when a flag is lost above 75%.

Oak Raise Dead Ward Skill Level Crossover (Mithy)
All raise dead chances, spirit levels, and spirit caps now conform to the correct skill level of the demigod for whom the spirit is raised, as was already the case with Lord Erebus' Conversion Aura.

Gold Loss/Gain On Unsuccessful Item Transaction (Mithy)
Item transaction events now insure against gold loss or gain when the item itself cannot be bought or sold, e.g. when dying.

Enemy Gold Amounts Visisble In UI Mods (Mithy)
Enemy gold values are no longer accessible to the UI. Existing UI mods that previously displayed enemy gold amounts will now only show zero.

Modal Demigod Weapon Stats (Mithy)
The UI will now correctly show the damage, rate of fire, and DPS calculations for the demigod's currently selected weapon. Without other mods in effect, this only affects Queen of Thorns' packed mode, but the fix will allow the display of asymmetric changes to Torchbearer's weapons as well.

Oculus Ball Lightning Auto-Attack/Advance (Mithy)
Ball Lightning now correctly attack-move to the location specified by the reticle, instead of ignoring the reticle and only attacking nearby targets.

Oculus Ball Lightning Health Bar (Mithy)
Ball Lightning now have a normal, fully-visible health bar above their mesh, like every other unit and minion.

Oculus Ball Lightning Formation Movement (Mithy)
Ball Lightning no longer cause Oculus and other minions selected and commanded with them to move slowly and attempt to join a formation. Ball Lightning will now behave exactly like other minions when given movement commands.

Oculus 'Sticky' Chain Lightning and Ball Lightning Effects (Mithy)
These lightning attacks should no longer break and create persistent lightning effects attached between the attacker and the former location of the target.

AI Citadel Upgrade Purchasing (Mithy)
AI are now able to purchase citadel upgrades that do not have a buff with the same name, e.g. Experience. Standard Demigod AI will still not purchase any upgrades unless a mod that enables this (such as the Skirmish AI Mod) is also used.

Experience Citadel Upgrade Persistence (Mithy)
Experience IV now correctly removes the Experience III bonus when purchased.

Feature Additions:
Several additional unit stats are now added to the Sync, allowing UI mods to display them for allied Demigods.
More details can be found in the comments in BuffAffects.lua. The added stats are as follows:

Evasion Chance
Slow Cap
Life Steal
Damage Return
Damage Reduction
Vision Radius
Omni Radius
Gold Production
Experience Multiplier
Death Penalty Multiplier

Previous fixes removed due to inclusion in Demigod Patch 1.3:

Oculus Sacrifice not healing allied units
Oculus Ball Lightning summoning in map void
Unclean Beast Plague/Post-Mortem conflict
Minion summoned hitpoints
Heart of Life and Wings of the Seraphim halting on healing

Previous fixes left in due to the patch 1.3 solution being insufficient/ineffective:

Oculus Electrocution ineffectuality
Lord Erebus Mist deactivation threshold
Unclean Beast Ooze deactivation threshold

v1.02

Oculus Sacrifice Fix by Ptarth
Sacrifice now will heal allied units.

Unclean Beast Ooze Suicide Fix by Ptarth
Ooze now correctly ends when the Unclean Beast is low on Health.

Lord Erebus Poisoned Blood Fix by Ptarth
Poisoned Blood Potions now act like the potions they disguise themselves as to the team whose Lord Erebus dropped them. This prevents Lord Erebus from farming his death and stops his team from being penalized for his skill choice.

Oculus Electrocution Fix by Ptarth
Health and Mana regeneration are now correctly stopped when a unit is under the effect of Electrocution.

Torch Bearer Projectile slowdown Fix by Ptarth
Torch Bearer's fireballs and Ice blasts now correctly home in on targets. This includes his Fireball ability.

Unclean Beast Post Mortem Plague Conflict Fix by Exxcentric
Plague I and II no longer remove the Post Mortem death effect.

Rook Move Attack Fix by Ptarth
Rook now is able to move attack properly.

v1.01

Orb of Veiled Storms Fix by Ptarth (bug reported by awuffleablehedgie)
The Orb of Veiled Storms now deals ArmorImmune damage like every other demigod ability and weapon ability (except for the Doomspite Grips and Girdle of Giants, which have a cleave attack).

Lord Erebus Mist Form by Ptarth
Fixed Mist Form ability so that it correctly ends when Lord Erebus has less than 125 mana.

ZikFix (Zikurat Tower Fix) by mrappard
The Dark side towers on Zikurat while playing Conquest now spawn correctly.

v1.0

Minion +hp Fix by Ptarth
Minions summoned by Demigods Generals [Sedna, Lord Erebus, Oak, Queen of Thorns, Oculus] with +minion hp items now have the correct health.

Oculus Brain Storm Fix by Ptarth
Brain Storm now has a visual effect at all levels, instead of only when Oculus has Mental Agility Brain Storm now removes debuffs on targeted unit as specified by the rollover tooltip text.

Queen of Thorns Attack Animation Glitch by Ptarth
Reduced the lifetime of the QoT's root attack animation to make the animation look better. This is only a cosmetic change.

Oculus Lightning Ball Summons by Ptarth
Lightning Balls will no longer summon in map void space.

Oculus Lightning Blast by Ptarth
Lightning Blast now occurs at the origin of the target instead of the origin of the unit that triggers the effect.

Missing Oculus Shield Effect by Ptarth
Oculus now has a visible Shield effect.

Heart of Life and Wings of the Seraphim Healing Fix by Ptarth (awuffleablehedgie provided starter code)
The Heart of Life and Wings of Seraphim no longer stop their regeneration effects when the user is healed.

Outstanding Bugs/Issues

Solvable Issues:
Modal Demigods spawning in default mode rather than last used mode
This is trivial to implement if there is popular support for it. At this point, I'd consider two or three votes 'popular', so make it known if you'd like this to be changed (or not).

Plague causes massive sim slowdowns
This is fixable, but will require a full re-write of how Plague works and infects units. Some balance changes may need to be made to reduce the check rate and radius of infection, as well as to reduce the overall run time of each Plague infection. This should result in similar overall effectiveness, with slightly less infection but faster damage delivery.

Unsolvable Issues:
Minion pathing issues / stuck minions
This is caused by poor handling of the pathfinding map's edges, usually around corners or the citadel. Without the ability to alter these pathing maps (they use a raw image format of some kind), there is nothing that can be done about this.

Unreliable multiplayer connectivity
This is contained completely within the engine/Impulse.

Achievements fail to record progress properly
As above.

Credits

Ptarth - the original creator of the Uberfix, responsible for most of the fixes prior to 1.03

Mithy/miriyaka - took the reins for 1.03, currently maintaining the project

awuffleablehedgie - bug reports and suggestions

pacov - lots of testing, feedback, and motivation

Hedgehog magic?

No, I've never opened them before. Someone has before though. This was months and months ago right after the game was released. I know they exist, I know it's grayscale, I didn't remember the name or location. So when you pointed out you had found it I was LIEK I KNO THAT

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Oh, and in looking through the issues on the google code site, I was reminded of the really stupid Oculus Blast Off I radius thing. Despite that no other demigod's level I AE ability has reduced radius, Oc's has the radius halved, giving it one quarter the affect area. It already only does 200 damage, putting it inline with TB's Rain of Ice (only an even smaller radius yet) and way less than Surge or any other level I or even II damage amount and radius. For reference, 3 radius is basically the amount of space one small creep or minion occupies - it's insignificantly tiny, and this ability level is basically unusable in its current form.

I'm going to change this so it's inline with the other three levels.

Quoting awuffleablehedgie,

reply 51

Hedgehog magic?

No, I've never opened them before. Someone has before though. This was months and months ago right after the game was released. I know they exist, I know it's grayscale, I didn't remember the name or location. So when you pointed out you had found it I was LIEK I KNO THAT

Welp. I might keep experimenting, or I might not. I'm not sure that this would be a great fix anyway. That's assuming I can even figure out how to save them once I get them opened properly; the only program I've had luck opening them with at all is a viewer only.

Pacov - what are the chances of getting this thread sticked, and the old Uberfix thread unstickied?

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Pacov - what are the chances of getting this thread sticked, and the old Uberfix thread unstickied?

very high % chance - will sort out tomorrow.

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I'd say that's a balance change, and for good reason.

Blast Off! does do double damage, so even though the radius is tiny, it would do 400 damage.

I don't think that the game developers want a demigod have access to a 400 damage AoE nuke AND a level 1 batswarm at level 1.

Of course, it can only be used as one or the other (either a batswarm or a 400 damage AoE nuke).

Unlike the permafrost change that I would like added (attack speed debuff being 5/10/15 instead of 3/10/15), bringing the radius inline has a significant balance impact.

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While I would agree with the general sentiment, 400 damage at barely-melee range is hardly a 'nuke' even at level 1. On top of that, the 'expanded' 6 radius is still considerably smaller than all other AoE abilities at any level - Surge, Rain of Ice, novas, etc all have 10+ radius, secondary effects, and do greater damage than either end of Blast Off I.

If the radius is actually small to limit damage output, it would have made far more sense to keep the radius and lower the base damage to 150. It's still capable of doing 400 damage to a demigod in melee with Oculus if you're incredibly lucky, and is generally if not totally incapable of doing full damage (really, ANY damage) to a moving demigod even with 6 radius, so it in no way functions like a true nuke at any level, and can ever only fully hit 'willing' targets that aren't trying to run.

The 'too powerful too early' argument also doesn't hold up terribly well when you consider that Blast Off II is available at level 4, and gives you quadruple area effect, increased range, and a potential 700 damage - that's an absolutely massive upgrade in every way. You could, using the same logic, argue that this level of the ability is overpowered, since the only other abilities that can theoretically do that much damage at level 4 are Spit II and Circle of Fire II, both slow DoTs. It works for any level of the ability, since they all have the potential to do excellent damage to things that are not moving away from you at all.

What I'm saying is that IF this was a balance decision on GPG's part, it was an incredibly poor one, with a much better, more obvious alternative. So yes, this change WOULD have a balance impact (if it didn't have an impact, I wouldn't bother suggesting it), in that right now, this level of the ability is only usable as an escape teleport, and this would make it usable for actual damage-dealing as well, like every other level.

I'm not trying to create reasons for people to not use the UberFix, so I'd like more input from other people, particularly those who play Oc (if there are any) before I decide to go ahead with something like this. It's just something that vexes me whenever I play Oc, and it smacks of poor planning/decisionmaking (much like basically everything about Oculus - rushed much?).

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I am all for making blast off! 1 have the same radius of effect as the higher ranks of it. Another thing that has to be considered is that blast off! 1 has a huge mana cost for oculus to use at rank 1. There is no danger in making its radius larger (da has a 400 nuke at level 1).

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Cow:

Occ starts with sufficient mana to use BO! twice, nearly immediately after cooldown (550 mana, 1063 pool, 3 regen, so 5 seconds after CD).

Furthermore, it's a logical fallacy to say it's "okay" because he doesn't have enough mana level 1. Even if you go CL/BO! instead of CL/BO!, you're going to have level 1 BO! at level 3... where mana will still be an issue but not nearly as much.

Also, what about teams with 2 generals? Occulus gets Scaled Helm instead or monks.

---

The problem with making it a large radius is not the raw damage (Sedna has a 400 nuke, melee range, DA has a long-range 400 nuke. Bite has a large swing as well). However, it does classify as a "nuke" which is a synonym for "alpha strike" since that is how Blast Off! is typically used.

It's that it is a high-damage AoE (it would destroy all the minotaurs in that creep wave, giving that team a significant dps advantage) that also provides the best escape mechanic before level 5, though, again, you can't use it both as high damage and an escape, but that's not the point I'm making.

Basically, it is my belief that level 1 BO! was not designed as a nuke. It is designed to be an escape mechanism, and it does that well (you don't have to level up BO!, you can just put one point into it for the jump and that's suboptimal but you can make it work).

If that bothers you that much, look how few characters have 2 level 1 damage abilities, and that none of them other than Occ's are AoE. (You can say Rain of Ice and Fire Circle but ... that has a long rotation).

Granting a large range BO! would enable Occulus to put out a 650 AoE at level 2. The only think that can compare with with that is a Fire TB and assuming the enemies are willing to stand in it.

BO! is balanced right now. Yes, it ramps up awesomely and I think it's a much better skill than CL. BO! II is fine as well.

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The only reason to change BO 1 IN UBERFIX is if it is clearly a coding error. If not, then it doesn't belong in uber. There enough evidence to call it a coding error?

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thread is now stickied and old uberfix is unstickied.

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I would say there isn't enough evidence to call it a coding error, no.

Permafrost, it's a little bit more obvious, but it is still a balance change (not a significant one like changing BO). I just think it's such a minor balance change (2% more snare for a level one ability, that most builds don't even get anyway), that it is easier to justify putting in. Like if there were some small balance issue regarding Bestial Wrath that was bugged somehow it's easier to justify than if Ooze were to be bugged and changing it made it better.

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It's impossible to guess at intent for BO I. Radius is an awful, awful way to balance it, if there was intent behind it. I'm not going to get behind the mana argument, because I'm not trying to justify that it isn't overpowered; if it isn't overpowered now, it won't be with 6 radius, because II isn't at its level, and III isn't at its, and likewise with IV. I'm only talking about bringing it in line with the way all other levels function, not 'rebalancing' it.

Re: killing early creep waves, that's the only thing it actually CAN do right now - just power out ahead of your creep wave, and the enemy minos crowd right around you at melee range. BO in-position, bam, dead creep wave. Let your wave die on the towers, and rinse/repeat until an enemy demigod shows up, at which point you won't be alphastriking any creep waves, 6 radius or not.

The main effect of (but not reason for) this change would be lessening the randomness of its effect against enemy demigods - right now you're lucky to get even a half hit against an enemy DG (usually no damage if they're moving). Extreme randomness/finicky application is never good balance, and the fact that GPG knows this is evident in nearly every other mechanic in the game (except for evasion and crits, which still average out well enough over time). This is why I'm calling BS on the it's-small-for-balance argument.

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Quoting OMG_pacov,

reply 59

thread is now stickied and old uberfix is unstickied.

Awesome, thanks.

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650 AoE damage at level 2. Just keep that number in your head.

That's enough to drop two BotF demigods down to 2/3rd HP, kill every creep in the area, and kill every monk. Yes, BO! can be interrupt by no demigod has a mana-efficient interrupt at level 1 (except Sedna). BO! main utility is for 3v3 rapefests and it's extremely useful for killing people as they port in. Furthermore, yes, you sorta do have to take a BO!

If you're ranged you should be able to avoid a point-blank BO! but Occulus is ranged as well so it's not like he's going to be unhappy staying at ranged anyway. If you're melee, you're going to have to get into melee range with Occ. If you try to just chip away with ranged alphas (Spit/Pentitence) he is just going to laugh, AA you, CL and kill the creep wave, then let monks heal him.

So, you're going to have to take a double BO! to the face anyway. Espiecially if they get Cloak.

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I'd just say skip this piece of code, personally.

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You can do 650 AoE damage right now if those two demigods are attacking you, or you have the creeps aggroed on you. That damage amount also already rises to a whopping 1100 at radius 6+ at level 4, which will be an even bigger percentage of those demigods' HP, even if they have Nimoth at that point.

I'm straight-up scoffin' at the thought of this killing monks. 6 radius doesn't even come close to reaching monks plus two enemy demigods at once. And if BO I will kill monks with 6 radius, then BO II + CL II must already be annihilating any level-4-affordable minions with a mere thought.

Any argument you bring against BO I being overpowered can be turned right back on every other level. Should we lower the blast radius of all of the higher levels to match I? Something here is out of line, and it's either I or every other level. Considering I is only useful at melee range, and the rest are semi-useful for doing decent damage to a bunch of stuff, but rarely double-hitting anything (and definitely not any unwilling targets), it would seem to me that level I is the one out of line.

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you keep saying it "rarely" hits anything and that the radius blows and whatnot.

The creeps converge in a very small line. 6 radius is enough to hit every demigod that is on a flag, unless, perhaps you are on the exact opposite of the flag. Therefore, in typical engagements, it is hitting every target you care about. And if you want to take that flag from Occ you're going to have to take the double-bounce in the face, unless you get a clutch interrupt. If you pussy foot and don't want to get into melee range, he is going to shoot you with his AA. It's also super-effective when an enemy ports in, because you harm him and melt his minions on-contact.

BO! is sort of what keeps Occulus competitive and is well balanced. It has the jump/escape of batswarm, with the risk of an interrupt. It's more mana efficient than CL and most other AoE abilities but requires positioning. It's a huge damage AoE nuke at the risk of lacking an escape mechanism for 6 seconds.

Making BO! radius too large gives Occulus' side a huge initial conflict advantage, which leads to controlling the HP flag which leads to a WS advantage which leads to a gold advantage...

The things that keep Occulus from being T1 is the lack of an interupt (and he performs pretty damn well without one), and the lack of good skill choices beyond about level 12, even with uberfix, though uberfix does help him quite a bit.

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The purpose of doing this isn't to make Oculus Tier 1 or any such nonsense. The purpose of doing it is because 3 radius is:

1) Out of line with every other level, and therefore every other AoE ability in the game. No other AoE varies in radius between its levels, nevermind so radically. Several of them vary in damage, however; if damage were 'out of line', e.g. 150 instead of 200, I would not raise an eyebrow at that - that would be an obvious, understandable balance consideration, because the ability would still be fully usable like all of its other levels, but with a raw damage output concession for level 1.

2) 3 radius does not hit anything that isn't in melee with you. It's an escape ability only, and its function is completely different from that of every other level, despite that the description of the ability does not indicate this at all. The effects are the same size, despite the fact they could have been resized for this level of the ability. There's no explanation whatsoever for why the radius is halved.

You can desperately try to infer balance, but it makes absolutely no sense as a balance consideration compared with lowering damage. I might, MIGHT have bought 4.5 radius as a balance consideration. It would still be a strange and obtuse way to do it, but at least 4.5 would be usable as a damage ability. However, I'm not pushing for 4.5, or for 150 damage, because this isn't about trying to 'rebalance' Oculus or Blast Off!, it's about fixing a level of an ability that is not inline with all others (and lacks any indication for why this is) and is not worth using in its current form.

By your own arguments re: when Oculus gets what damage output levels, he is already 'T1' or too powerful, because 1150 damage is far more significant at level 4 than 650 is at level 1. Nobody has double hitpoints at L4, unless they started without BotF and bought nothing but health items (i.e. picked the wrong favor item and are trying to overcompensate), and even that's a stretch for most DGs. Nevermind that generals' minions at L4 are going to have the SAME hitpoints as they would at L1, making them even easier to kill with the 'okay' levels of the ability.

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Basically, arguing that I would be overpowered at 6 radius is fallacious as all hell, because the higher levels are comparatively even more powerful vs the things you keep bringing up: flag holding, minions, etc.

Nevermind that my argument isn't that it's 'underpowered' at I, but 'wrong'. Totally unusable, cannot have been intended, tested properly, etc. A completely different ability than II+.

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Who uses blast off 1 anyway? You use your mana to chain the tower as a creep wave is coming, everyone knows that.

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There wasn't enough testing done on Oculus.
This is a balance issue.
It may be justified.

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Not sure if this is really uberfix related, but I'll throw it out. We played some games tonight using uberfix/skirmish/favormod. In that, there is a favor item called rebuilder or something like that. It looks exactly like occ's ball lightning, but cast heals. Anyway, we saw the lightning effect from them to random dgs from time to time (eg the lightning that persists across the map for a bit showing the ball/other dgs location). Anyway, as I haven't seen it happen since the last uberfix version, perhaps its related directly to favormod. Just throwing that out there, though. But also, it could exist associated with ball lightning and we just haven't seen it as ball lightning is typically only utilized super late game. So, could be the bug still exists - it just isn't being proc'd on occ.

Oh - tournament discussion time. Miriyaka - as it stands, we'll be using uberfix 1.03 to complete the current demigod tournament. If you have another release you want tested and used for the tourney, you should make a release ASAP and I can ensure we get it tested. But, it needs to happen very soon. Otherwise, we just stick 1.03. Thanks!

This is a balance issue.

Miri - you really need to consider some things. I can push uberfix to the general population AS LONG AS its bug fixes. As we delve into gray areas, then you start getting folks refusing to use the mod because they think X is unfair. We've already crossed a little gray area with ub suicides and erb's death pots. Making another step in that direction for such a minor gain is inadvisable imo. If this becomes a mod people won't use because of disagreements with the modders, the mod becomes dead. So again, I say drop the Occ topic. You might be right (and I still think its pretty frickin minor, tbh), but its not worth the potential consequences.

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Quoting GM-McShane87,

reply 69

Who uses blast off 1 anyway? You use your mana to chain the tower as a creep wave is coming, everyone knows that.

Agreed, the only thing it would do is give oc a potential kill at level 2 with a jump/double jump + chain on a squishy DG. I can't really see this happening unless a reg is on the same team as an oculus. Doing a jump to get that pesky reg behind his tower at level 2 would almost certainly get you killed, no mana, no escape route. If the other team has a port your dead.

Making this change seems logical to me and as far as balance goes I can't see oculus ever touching tier 1.

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Quoting Ptarth,

reply 70

There wasn't enough testing done on Oculus.
This is a balance issue.
It may be justified.

Pretty much, yeah. My motivation for bringing it forward isn't balance, but as it would make a useless ability usable, it will affect balance in some way.

As Pacov brought up, there are already several existing 'balance' changes, some pretty significant.

The Erebus potion change affects balance FAR more than any other change I would ever consider including in this mod, and had I been around for the discussion about it, I'd have strongly argued in favor of marking the potions with a very obvious warning effect for the team they belong to, and curtailing the experience/gold/level/kill gain when a friendly dies to them. It's a far more involved solution, but it would retain more of the original balance without punishing-team-and-rewarding-suicides aspect. I guess I could still do this, and now that it's been brought up, I might take a shot at it.

I don't know how the initial argument for the Ooze suicide issue went either, but at least half of that one is arguably a bug - they did the health check AFTER the damage, which is just dumb. Same for Erb's Mist Form mana drain. I briefly argued against doing a 'total' Ooze suicide solution (look at the comments in the google code issue for it) because the 1.02 solution worked unless you were taking other damage, but I didn't really care that much, and then when I realized I could add functionality while fixing it, my inhibitions dropped. Whoops. I don't have to include the full fix, but the 1.03 fix is already 75% there, so I may as well.

Are there any others that I'm forgetting about, that haven't been mentioned recently?

If it seems like I'm taking a hard line on this BO! thing, it's more that I just really like arguing, and that Oc's code is a goddamned mess (like, really) and is full of stuff like this that makes no sense. He's been the recipient of more than twice as many fixes as any other demigod, in both official patches (mostly failed fixes) and the UberFix. Plus Oc is already unpopular to play, because while he's a nice mid-game damage-dealer, half of his abilities are so useless or broken that there's only one viable build, and it tapers off seriously around level 15ish due to crappy high level abilities and a complete lack of (working) debuffs.

So I'm not worried about this change causing revolt, or a sudden explosion of Oculus dominance. The only reason I'm not just strong-arming it in is because I know (as you mentioned, Pacov) that people will try to find any excuse they can for not using a mod like this, even though it makes radically greater, entirely-beneficial balance changes to two quite-powerful Tier 1 demigods (that those people probably play).

And that's why I'm going to argue it into the ground, because it's pretty much a non-issue for anyone who doesn't play Oc, and still won't be earth-shattering for anyone that does. Deal with it.

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Oh, and if a FavorMod ability causes the sticky effects thing, it means he probably just copied code from Chain Lightning. The functional code for each demigod/item's ability is unique, so the UberFix wouldn't help or hurt a FavorMod item that works similarly to CL.

Exxentric is more than welcome to copy the changes I made to CL for his item if he'd like it to be stick-proof. The details of what I changed are in this thread, and the google code issue.

I will probably not be releasing 1.04 soon enough for the tournament - it's already got a bunch of barely-tested stuff in it, and 1.03 is looking perfectly solid at this point, so there's no reason to upset it. Unless someone really wants that QoT fix in, but abusing that in a tournament should pretty much get you disqualified anyway, so w/e.

And I can't fix the other issue, it's totally 100% engine. I'd have to do some really brutal UI-side order-interception to make any kind of workaround, and an enterprising bastard could see what I did and circumvent it with a simple UI mod anyway.

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I will probably not be releasing 1.04 soon enough for the tournament - it's already got a bunch of barely-tested stuff in it, and 1.03 is looking perfectly solid at this point, so there's no reason to upset it. Unless someone really wants that QoT fix in, but abusing that in a tournament should pretty much get you disqualified anyway, so w/e.

I think we can just stick with 1.03 then. Thanks

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UberFix 1.06 [1/18/2012]

miriyaka