Σ 1.4 Bugs&Feedback

I feel that one of the biggest weakness of Median is that you have to tab out of the game in order to get information about basically anything. It would be great if that information could be accesible in the game.

For example you could give Greiz or whatever his name is another speech bubble tab that adds information on what skills which a2 merc uses and what those skills do.

You could also give cain who basically has no use since all items drop identified a list with all cube recipes that aren't listed already on the items themselves like the catalysts.
So you click on him, the overlay pops up where you can select "talk", "Cube recipes" and "cancel", then you click on "cube recipes" where you can find things like "Jewelcrafting", "RIP recipe", "Lottery Bonus" and so on. Then when you click on it, he lists all those things with a very slow moving speed (if it's possible it can stay still, too).

Of course this won't be possible with all information, like which afiixes tiered uniques have (unless you go through the trouble and add lots of specific subitems, which in turn would be a huge design disaster), but it would definitely help with smaller things.

ParticuLarry wrote:I feel that one of the biggest weakness of Median is that you have to tab out of the game in order to get information about basically anything. It would be great if that information could be accesible in the game.

For example you could give Greiz or whatever his name is another speech bubble tab that adds information on what skills which a2 merc uses and what those skills do.

You could also give cain who basically has no use since all items drop identified a list with all cube recipes that aren't listed already on the items themselves like the catalysts.
So you click on him, the overlay pops up where you can select "talk", "Cube recipes" and "cancel", then you click on "cube recipes" where you can find things like "Jewelcrafting", "RIP recipe", "Lottery Bonus" and so on. Then when you click on it, he lists all those things with a very slow moving speed (if it's possible it can stay still, too).

Of course this won't be possible with all information, like which afiixes tiered uniques have (unless you go through the trouble and add lots of specific subitems, which in turn would be a huge design disaster), but it would definitely help with smaller things.

It's a good practice to have information available in the game itself, because that makes it a lot more immersive. Yet, the mod is really complicated and the documentation is large. The information in the documentation is well organized, in my opinion, and the searching with Ctrl+F is fast. I don't think that alt-tab is that much of a deal and I'm also not sure how much implementation efforts are required. Additionally, I think documentation management on the website is a lot easier than in-game.

in game tool tips will never be as in depth as the documentation

I agree with both of you, hence my suggestion.

documentation is quite lacking in some respects too, specially on endgame gear oskills and procs. how can I know how to take advantage of some skills and procs if there's no documentation on what they do and how they scale?

Diaco wrote:documentation is quite lacking in some respects too, specially on endgame gear oskills and procs. how can I know how to take advantage of some skills and procs if there's no documentation on what they do and how they scale?

get oskill -> read tooltip

CallMeCrazySam wrote:
Diaco wrote:documentation is quite lacking in some respects too, specially on endgame gear oskills and procs. how can I know how to take advantage of some skills and procs if there's no documentation on what they do and how they scale?

get oskill -> read tooltip

tooltips don't always show the scaling for the skill. and what about procs?

Diaco wrote:
CallMeCrazySam wrote:
Diaco wrote:documentation is quite lacking in some respects too, specially on endgame gear oskills and procs. how can I know how to take advantage of some skills and procs if there's no documentation on what they do and how they scale?

get oskill -> read tooltip

tooltips don't always show the scaling for the skill. and what about procs?

In top menu on forum "Game - Wiki". There you can find all skills (not actual numbers and how they scale with level but at least what they doing)..
There was "skill calculator tool" long time ago. No idea why it removed now.

PS: Also i really miss oskill/proc list from very old Ult docs. I mean page that was listing oskills/procs with items where they can be found.

It seems to me that physical damage from wdm skills is fundamentally broken. So far I've tested only 4 skills (Rend, Storm Crows, Wraithsword and Earthquake), that is it was a 2 different skill functions, i.e. SrvDoFunc = 8 (vanilla multiple shot) and SrvDoFunc = 11 (vanilla charged strike). Judging by the results and considering the fact that these skills should not have any specific hardcoded behavior (at least when it comes to a damage evaluation) I can conclude that any wdm skill could be busted exactly the same way.

My issue is that I couldn't get the expected raw damage output from these skills in the current version of Sigma. I was using somewhat comparable and sort of realistic setup while I was testing Wraithsword and Rend. It wasn't minmaxed setup but the difference between the expected and the actual damage was quite substantial: it was around 9% more damage in the first case and around 73% (!) more damage in the second one. I haven't tested Storm Crows and Earthquake thoroughly, yet the difference was significant enough to explain it by integer arithmetic and rounding.

Just to be sure that I'm not mistaken I replicated this experiment on MXL17 and my estimated damage was confirmed by the actual numbers in game. I was using exactly the same skills (same SrcDam, HitShift, etc.) with exactly the same setup (same stats, same skill level, etc.), that is I highly doubt that something went wrong all things considered.

I have no idea what could be the reason behind this deviation, but if damage doesn't want to obey the conventional rules, there is definitely something wrong with the game.

I tried out a build based on

Icebird

Icebird
Flying Knife (4)
Throw Damage: (5 - 7) to (7 - 8)
One-Hand Damage: (5 - 7) to (7 - 8)
Required Level: 10
Required Dexterity: 53
Item Level: 10
Dexterity Damage Bonus: (0.11 per Dexterity)%
1% Chance to cast level 2 Shackles of Ice on Striking
Adds (3 to 4)-(5 to 9) Cold Damage
+(18 to 40)% Enhanced Damage
-(4 to 6)% to Enemy Cold Resistance
+(1 to 2) to APF-20 'Maelstrom' MkI
Cold Absorb 2%
8% Magic Find
Socketed (1)
Throw Damage: (24 - 27) to (27 - 31)
One-Hand Damage: (18 - 20) to (19 - 22)
Required Level: 23
Required Dexterity: 84
Item Level: 36
Dexterity Damage Bonus: (0.11 per Dexterity)%
1% Chance to cast level 6 Shackles of Ice on Striking
Adds (11 to 13)-(26 to 33) Cold Damage
+(64 to 86)% Enhanced Damage
-(7 to 9)% to Enemy Cold Resistance
+(3 to 6) to APF-20 'Maelstrom' MkI
Cold Absorb 3%
13% Magic Find
Socketed (2)
Throw Damage: (56 - 62) to (64 - 71)
One-Hand Damage: (33 - 37) to (37 - 41)
Required Level: 41
Required Dexterity: 169
Item Level: 51
Dexterity Damage Bonus: (0.11 per Dexterity)%
1% Chance to cast level 10 Shackles of Ice on Striking
Adds (41 to 50)-(121 to 130) Cold Damage
+(109 to 132)% Enhanced Damage
-(10 to 12)% to Enemy Cold Resistance
+(7 to 11) to APF-20 'Maelstrom' MkI
Cold Absorb 4%
18% Magic Find
Socketed (2)
Throw Damage: (76 - 83) to (85 - 93)
One-Hand Damage: (44 - 48) to (48 - 53)
Required Level: 50
Required Dexterity: 337
Item Level: 77
Dexterity Damage Bonus: (0.11 per Dexterity)%
1% Chance to cast level 12 Shackles of Ice on Striking
Adds (91 to 100)-(211 to 260) Cold Damage
+(132 to 154)% Enhanced Damage
-(13 to 15)% to Enemy Cold Resistance
+(12 to 16) to APF-20 'Maelstrom' MkI
Cold Absorb 5%
20% Magic Find
Socketed (2)

on an amazon with Curare. Later I wanted to switch to a craft or

Herfjotur

Herfjotur
Amazon Javelins
'BerOrt'
Runeword Level: 78
Ring Of Flames Gains +1% Total Damage per Character Level
5% Chance to cast level 1 Timefield on Kill
2% Chance to cast level 19 Ring of Flames on Striking
+(1 to 2) to Amazon Skill Levels
+(60 to 80) to Maximum Damage
+(15 to 20)% to Fire Spell Damage
-(25 to 30)% to Enemy Fire Resistance
+(141 to 171)% Enhanced Damage
(3 to 5)% Chance of Crushing Blow
Slow Target 25%
+(40 to 60) to Energy
Lightning Resist +30%

until I realized it's not the same skill. And honestly, I can partly understand why they are different, but the difference is imho too much.

APF-20 Maelstrom MK1 has 80% weapon damage and the flechettes hit the same target multiple times. Also, the base knife flies through the enemies, making it easy to spam and aim. Additionally, it adds about 640 magic damage currently, and it costs about 100 mana on skill level 18.

Maelstrom on the other hand has 25% weapon damage, the flechettes only hit each target once (or twice at most) and the base knife stops at the first enemy it encounters, so you have to aim next to the target you want to attack and if the enemies move around, you may or may not have a whole attack wasted. It adds 80 magic damage currently and it costs about 80 mana on skill level 14.

So summed up: The mana cost is about the same, the magic damage on maelstrom is a lot worse, the aiming is a lot worse, it doesn't hit the same enemy as often, it spreads poison worse, and the life and mana leech is a lot better.

I understand that Maelstrom basically gives you more leech, but it takes so much more time to even kill a single spider in act 5 nightmare arreat plateau, that I can only take this skill as a nice troll move. It looks like the only midgame option stays Icebird in order to spread the poison damage (since it has the same weapon damage modifier Pounce has)

Though I have to admit that I haven't specced into the Javelin tree and that I'm still using the stormzon passive. So maybe that's why the skill just seems so bad. I assume it'll be better with the ~400% EWD from Moon Queen. So I'll test it some more, but so far I'm quite disappointed with the midgame option for Maelstrom zon, and I'm sure the main damage (poison) will be pretty bad on the craft, which essentially counteracts my goal. Maybe I'm lucky and can find a

Heartseeker

later on. Wish me luck.