[PLEASE EXPLAIN LIKE I'M FIVE] Ancestral Blight (shaman ult) doesn't apply stacks

[Evalynn]

Platform, device and operation system
Android latest

What were you expecting to happen, and what actually happened
When casting the ultimate spell of the shaman against a PVE enemy, no stacks of venom or toxin are applied on either the caster or the target. The 100% venom damage buff is applied to the caster, still.

[quote=“Evalynn, post:1, topic:875, full:true”]
Platform, device and operation system
Android latest

What were you expecting to happen, and what actually happened
When casting the ultimate spell of the shaman against a PVE enemy, no stacks of venom or toxin are applied on either the caster or the target. The 100% venom damage buff is applied to the caster, still.

Note that I haven’t checked PVP yet.
Update: Just checked PVP and issue persists.

Happens regardless of number of toxic gems matched, or the number of charges you had when you cast it.

How often does this happen? When did it begin happening?
I can’t tell how long it’s been happening, because I just changed my main build on my shaman which started to depend heavily on venom stacks on the enemy. I realized after using a spell that should have scaled according to stacks of venom on the enemy, and noted that that did not happen. After checking the enemy status, I confirmed that they did not have any stacks of venom or any other status changes.

Steps to make it happen again
Gain enough mana to cast the shaman ultimate spell, and then cast it on an enemy in a PVE scenario. Note the effect, or lack thereof.

Casting sequence and status screens:

As you can see, I matched 2 toxic gems (the bottles) and the only effect was the damage buff - no stacks were applied.

Maybe I’m misunderstanding how the spell is supposed to work, which is totally possible! If so, can you please explain how the heck I’m supposed to do this?

Happens regardless of number of toxic gems matched, or the number of charges you had when you cast it.

[Sibelios]

Application of venom comes from spells (Scorpion Venom, Pure Venom, etc). Ulti buff amplifies the effect of the venom (25% damage increase) applied from the spells. It’s unfortunately complicated.

[Evalynn]

I originally thought that too but then I read the spells again.

The above gives you conflicting information. On the spell loadout screen, it only mentions the damage buff and the Big Green gem. However, on the description of a toxic gem, you can clearly see that it says that you should be getting stacks of something.

When read together, these suggest that you should get three things when you cast your ultimate spell:

1. Venom damage buff
2. Big Green gem (lvl3)
3. 1-3 stacks of “toxin”

Note that the buff you get is not named toxin.

[Sibelios]

To the right you can see the stack of Venom applied from Scorpion Venom Spell. To the left you can see the stack of “toxin” (you are correct that they should improve the naming; clearly called Empower Venoms) on your Shaman.

The “stacks” is a reference to the multiplier; I have matched 3-4 Vials (can’t recall exactly how many) and received “stacks” or additions to the multiplier, now up to 180% compared to your example of 100%

I think you have a good post though that the verbiage could be clearer; when we see “stacks” we should see a number, like the venom “stacks” on the enemy.

[Evalynn]

@Sibelios I know that, thank you, though!

If you go back and read the entire descriptive text though, there’s clearly a separate thing. That thing isn’t happening. If it’s not supposed to it should be removed from the tooltips, or otherwise corrected.

And I also like to point out that the terminology “stack” denotes that you should see multiple copies of a thing in one piece. That means in game UI that the icon should exist once with a number on it representing the number of stacks applied/remaining. The fact that the percentage doesn’t increase until you manually check the tooltip is not only unhelpful, it’s misleading.

[Sibelios]

Agree with all. It’s working but the language needs to be better.

[Evalynn]

I would also like to get a little opinionated here and suggest that a shaman should not have to rely on outside sources to apply venom. It’s supposed to be a class mechanism, and it would make sense that when you break a toxic bottle, something gets poisoned.

The whole thing is just freaking stupid and needs to be redesigned, redocumented, and rewritten.

[Sibelios]

Shaman Ulti is by far the clunkiest and least efficient

[Evalynn]

By the way, if I’m coming off is grumpy at you, I’m sorry! I’m not actually grumpy at you at all, I’m grumpy as hell at this game.

[Marin]

I agree shaman ult is confusing and also doesn’t synergize well.

A small change where it applies to venom and poison would help.

[Salty]

I want to pass this on to the devs but the back and forth has confused me. Please explain this like I’m 5 with dot points.

If there is an issue with UI and communication I can put this in our Quality of Life request board.

[Evalynn]

@Salty No problem!

Long story short, there are three places where the details of the shaman ultimate spell effects are shown, and all three have contradictory info.

I think the verbiage just needs to be more consistent - “toxins” and “venoms” aren’t really interchangeable terms.

As a side note, the Shaman ultimate relying on external sources of venom is really castrating the class. It’s effectively pigeonholing you into needing a specific type of spell build for the ultimate to be useful. Do other classes limit you like this? Because one of the best things about this game family is having fun with spell builds and trying new combos. I can’t do that because I’m forced to always have spells with venom.

[Salty]

I’ve passed this on to the devs and added it to our QoL board. Thank you for the clear, concise breakdown!

[Tacet]

@Salty

QoL board

Not sure you understand the post if you are putting it under the QoL section.

Shaman’s secondary ultimate ability literally does nothing. It is a bug.

What was being mentioned by the additional information is the inconsistency of how the effect is described across the game, but ultimately the bigger issue is that the stacking % on Shaman’s ultimate does nothing.

The wording within the game combined with the fact it doesn’t work at all also causes an issue in that even when the bug is fixed, we don’t currently know what it will do. The wording could mean any of three things:

1: Venoms last % longer turns.
2: Venom does % more damage.
3: Venom does % more damage %.

[Salty]

I’ve recorded the bug seperately, and added the above issues with the Shaman class to the QoL board. When we make changes to the Shaman class we will need to take the bug into account as well.