A few patches back, we had a nerf to our Imp Fireball and Imp Frostbolt. suspiciously missing from that list was any nerf to arcane missiles. But wait... AM only fires 4 out of 5 missiles most of the time. So there is a 20% dps loss built in right there... no need to nerf it... Thus, no need to fix it...

Probably because it isn't broken. As someone who actually uses all of his spells, I probably cast missiles more than all the people who complain about it put together. And guess what, IT NEVER BUGS FOR ME!

=O

I also know how to look where I'm running so Blink doesn't screw up. I must be magic or something. Bet none of you use dampen magic either. Reduces healing? That's horrible when you solo!

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Q u o t e:
Probably because it isn't broken. As someone who actually uses all of his spells, I probably cast missiles more than all the people who complain about it put together. And guess what, IT NEVER BUGS FOR ME!

=O

I also know how to look where I'm running so Blink doesn't screw up. I must be magic or something. Bet none of you use dampen magic either. Reduces healing? That's horrible when you solo!

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I have it bug out on me about a third of the time. I think the real deal here is you don't know how to count to 5. L2C

1...2....5!
3 sir.
3!

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Q u o t e:
Probably because it isn't broken. As someone who actually uses all of his spells, I probably cast missiles more than all the people who complain about it put together. And guess what, IT NEVER BUGS FOR ME!

=O

I also know how to look where I'm running so Blink doesn't screw up. I must be magic or something. Bet none of you use dampen magic either. Reduces healing? That's horrible when you solo!

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As somone who also uses it all the time, I can tell you its bugged. Its not a complete 20% loss like most people seem to think, but there are issues when it won't cast all the bolt. Combat log and Scrolling text all show only 4 hints every once in a while. GM's have repeatedly said "It's a known issue".

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Q u o t e:


As somone who also uses it all the time, I can tell you its bugged. Its not a complete 20% loss like most people seem to think, but there are issues when it won't cast all the bolt. Combat log and Scrolling text all show only 4 hints every once in a while. GM's have repeatedly said "It's a known issue".

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same here, and if you don't believe me, look at my spec, why would I have empowered AM if I never use it...yes it is bugged. Checked combat log scrolling text etc.

-Mitaku

Yeah, the bug is there, but I've noticed something that I never hear people talk about. Occasionally I'll throw out 6 volleys instead of 5. I'll try and grab a screen shot of it at some point but for the most part I generally see all 5. The 4 only seems to happen when there is lag or something strange like that.

sometimes I get a lag and 2 go out really close together, but I have never noticed them not firing unless the target dies. The animation does cancel if the target dies. I'd hate to say that that may be your problem because that would be assuming stupidity. We wouldn't want to do that now, would we? I can count to five and then some. Being the nitpicky person that I am, I always count my AM bolts. I don't even need to look to do it w/ sound on...sooooo........

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Q u o t e:
Yeah, the bug is there, but I've noticed something that I never hear people talk about. Occasionally I'll throw out 6 volleys instead of 5. I'll try and grab a screen shot of it at some point but for the most part I generally see all 5. The 4 only seems to happen when there is lag or something strange like that.

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Yep, pretty much definition of "bugged". When this first became an issue, I started monitoring my combat log. At the time, I was counting up to 40% of the time getting only 4 pulses out. No damage to me, so that wasn't it. If it is just lag, well, lag is like the weather. It's always there.

6!!! that would be awesome... it's like the missing missile from a 4 shot volley was hiding in your pocket or something and decided to join its friends...

Anyway, I check the combat log every time I get a 4 missile volley and it only shows 4 damages. Believe me, I wish it worked, I'd switch to Emp AM in a heart beat.

Until then, I'm wearing my tinfoil hat... blizz hates Arcane people...

So here is my screen shot for people that don't believe AM is only firing 4 missiles some of the time.

http://i167.photobucket.com/albums/u149/gnusha/AMmisfire.jpg

I went over to Dr. Boom and shot a volley of AM... then a wand shot to separate the volleys. As you can see, there are 3 of the 7 volleys only have 4 missiles. I did this about 20 times and 7 only had 4 missiles.

Assuming this is the normal percent, then 7 missiles out of 100 did not show up... so it is a 7% decrease in DPS...

gonna post this on the bug forum too...

Clearly I don't know the code nor am I a programmer - but if the spell mechanics are known to cause issues that are impossible to solve, why not change how the spell functions to accomodate a means that actually works?

We're really not THAT attached to the Arcane Missiles animation - you can replace the entire spell with something that does the exact same thing, we're cool with it. We'll only QQ a lot, instead of a whole lot.


Edit -
To elaborate further, it seems the team is aware of what is causing the problem. The team is also aware that the bug is very hard to reproduce and/or fix, but there are hundreds of spells that work fine. Instead of banging everyones head against a wall trying to fix an overly problematic spell that is broken at its core, wouldnt it make more sense to start with a working spell and make adjustments from there to make it fit in line with what blizz feels 'Arcane Missiles' should be? Trying to bug fix Arcane Missiles, which from Day 1 has had issues, is like putting your finger in a water retaining device frowned upon by the text filter. Modify Mind Flay to do arcane damage over 5 seconds and slap on a new name, for example.

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Q u o t e:
It's not like we don't believe people when they say AM or Blink acts funky, it's just that it is a latency related bug and difficult to reproduce on demand and to fully resolve through coding. They both have similar bugs because of the way they both target. A direct damage spell does different checks when casting and firing at their target. Blink and AM use a sort of terrain-mapping function to determine a path, rather than just pinging the target. It's the terrain inconsistencies which cause the failure of the spell, coupled with latency issues.

We've wanted to implement new methods of testing, such as putting 'artificial load' on a test environment, but that can be costly. We're also looking into other possibilities of 'live testing' so that latency can be taken into account, somewhat.

The biggest problem with resolving these bugs has been recreating the variable of network latency, which affects these spells more than other types.

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Thanks for this level of detail Tseric; there's been a lot of speculation in the past.

Oh, and please ask your employers what the hell they were thinking when you get a chance. Trust me, they'll know what I'm talking about.

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Q u o t e:
It's not like we don't believe people when they say AM or Blink acts funky, it's just that it is a latency related bug and difficult to reproduce on demand and to fully resolve through coding. They both have similar bugs because of the way they both target. A direct damage spell does different checks when casting and firing at their target. Blink and AM use a sort of terrain-mapping function to determine a path, rather than just pinging the target. It's the terrain inconsistencies which cause the failure of the spell, coupled with latency issues.

We've wanted to implement new methods of testing, such as putting 'artificial load' on a test environment, but that can be costly. We're also looking into other possibilities of 'live testing' so that latency can be taken into account, somewhat.

The biggest problem with resolving these bugs has been recreating the variable of network latency, which affects these spells more than other types.

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I understand what you are saying and am not mad. Just keep in mind that as long as AM is bugged I will never use it. So up to you guys whether you decide to put the effort into fixing it or removing it all together then.

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Q u o t e:
It's not like we don't believe people when they say AM or Blink acts funky, it's just that it is a latency related bug and difficult to reproduce on demand and to fully resolve through coding. They both have similar bugs because of the way they both target. A direct damage spell does different checks when casting and firing at their target. Blink and AM use a sort of terrain-mapping function to determine a path, rather than just pinging the target. It's the terrain inconsistencies which cause the failure of the spell, coupled with latency issues.

We've wanted to implement new methods of testing, such as putting 'artificial load' on a test environment, but that can be costly. We're also looking into other possibilities of 'live testing' so that latency can be taken into account, somewhat.

The biggest problem with resolving these bugs has been recreating the variable of network latency, which affects these spells more than other types.

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To summerise the above post.

1) It will never get fixed.

2) Blizzard developers have no idea what they're doing. Seriously if you don't know how to cause load or latency on a network for testing purposes, your developers need to go back to school.

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Q u o t e:
It's not like we don't believe people when they say AM or Blink acts funky, it's just that it is a latency related bug and difficult to reproduce on demand and to fully resolve through coding. They both have similar bugs because of the way they both target. A direct damage spell does different checks when casting and firing at their target. Blink and AM use a sort of terrain-mapping function to determine a path, rather than just pinging the target. It's the terrain inconsistencies which cause the failure of the spell, coupled with latency issues.

We've wanted to implement new methods of testing, such as putting 'artificial load' on a test environment, but that can be costly. We're also looking into other possibilities of 'live testing' so that latency can be taken into account, somewhat.

The biggest problem with resolving these bugs has been recreating the variable of network latency, which affects these spells more than other types.

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I understand what you're talking about when come to Blink... But AM doesn't perform ground check... Why would it does?
You know, when I lag, my frostbolt still fire. Fire some coders, and hire some to copy/paste the code from frostbolt over AM, and make it fires 5 time in a row.

Tseric, everytime you talk you make me laugh... Seriously.

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Q u o t e:
It's not like we don't believe people when they say AM or Blink acts funky, it's just that it is a latency related bug and difficult to reproduce on demand and to fully resolve through coding. They both have similar bugs because of the way they both target. A direct damage spell does different checks when casting and firing at their target. Blink and AM use a sort of terrain-mapping function to determine a path, rather than just pinging the target. It's the terrain inconsistencies which cause the failure of the spell, coupled with latency issues.

We've wanted to implement new methods of testing, such as putting 'artificial load' on a test environment, but that can be costly. We're also looking into other possibilities of 'live testing' so that latency can be taken into account, somewhat.

The biggest problem with resolving these bugs has been recreating the variable of network latency, which affects these spells more than other types.

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Not to sound rude or anything, but if you want artificial load go:

a) download a large file from your prefferred torrent site. There's plenty of large legal downloads there.
b) go to http://boinc.berkeley.edu download the client, and run some scientific simulations in the background.

There you go, network and CPU load, completely free of charge.

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Q u o t e:
It's not like we don't believe people when they say AM or Blink acts funky, it's just that it is a latency related bug and difficult to reproduce on demand and to fully resolve through coding. They both have similar bugs because of the way they both target. A direct damage spell does different checks when casting and firing at their target. Blink and AM use a sort of terrain-mapping function to determine a path, rather than just pinging the target. It's the terrain inconsistencies which cause the failure of the spell, coupled with latency issues.

We've wanted to implement new methods of testing, such as putting 'artificial load' on a test environment, but that can be costly. We're also looking into other possibilities of 'live testing' so that latency can be taken into account, somewhat.

The biggest problem with resolving these bugs has been recreating the variable of network latency, which affects these spells more than other types.

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BUDDY!!! u really need to get teh devs to make frost nova break on ice lance crits only , otherwise if u have molten armor on and it crits as your running away frost nova just bacame pointless u gained no distance. Besides that what about if your rogue buddies offhand crits for say 50 lol and its all over again?? It really seems like the devs just got lazy here and instead of making it break only from specific crits they just used. If crit - then yes

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Q u o t e:
It's the terrain inconsistencies which cause the failure of the spell, coupled with latency issues.

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I disagree with this. The current problem is 100% related to some sort of latency, and has nothing to do with a terrain issue.

Honestly, though, if it is a latency issue then bliz is allowing the player's computer to request when each missile fires. That is a mistake. The player's computer should only request when the spell starts, and then the server should handle firing all 5 missiles SERVER SIDE and just let the player's computer know what's happening. That way, 5 missiles will go off every time. As it is now, the player's computer is requesting the 5th missile outside the window you have allocated for its 5-second cast, and the server is rejecting it.