What you were expecting to happen, and what actually happened:
I’m in Drowned Grotto, in the second room of the Sunken Fleet event, at level 50. I bought only Tier I for the Event.
Vodyanoi was the only surviving enemy. I don’t think it had any status effects. It had 54 Life and 3 Armor – I know because I actually wanted to test the Boost Ratio, to see if I understood it correctly. Hero weapon was showing “Deal 43 damage…”, and Hero was the only ally Submerged (still is). When I cast Thingamabob on Vodyanoi, I was expecting it to do 50 damage = 43 + 1x7, being 43 damage plus 7 damage for 1 Submerged ally. That would leave Vodyanoi with 7 Life.
In fact, I watched Vodyanoi and clearly saw the damage indicator: +44. That’s confirmed by the fact it has 13 Life in the screenshot. (Note that Hero’s magic went up by 2, probably from the weapon’s Magical affix.) That means, the actual Boost Ratio applied was x1 rather than x7. Damage was: 43 + (1 Submerged ally) x1 = 44.
How often does this happen? When did it begin happening?
First time I’ve noticed this, but then it’s the first time I’ve checked. I will keep paying attention throughout the Faction Assault, and will post the results below.
Steps to make it happen again
Cast Thingamabob? No idea.
Submerged gets removed when casting a spell, prior to calculating boosted damage. Same applies to blessed, so a blessed Vanya Soulmourn is never able to self-boost her damage.
Well that’s handy to know! Thank you, Fourdottwoone. I’m really glad it actually makes sense.
I guess this becomes a suggestion to change the wording of the weapon’s spell, then, because there is no way a new player (much less an 11-month semi-veteran like myself) is going to make the connection, even if they do know that casting a spell removes Submerge. There’s just no indication that the caster doesn’t count.
Luckily, the new wording only requires a very simple change: “Deal [Magic+4] damage to an enemy and adjacent enemies, boosted by other Submerged allies.” That is, add the word, “other”. Alternatively, add the words “other than myself.” to the end of the description.
Incidentally, I figured out the extra 1 damage in the calculation above: Frostmage’s second trait gives 1 Magic when an ally casts a spell. So my Magic increases by 1 when I cast, that increases the damage of the weapon’s spell, then the weapon’s Magical trait increases my Magic by another 1 point.
PS: This weapon is the only source of what could be called “full splash damage”. I’m referring, of course, to the recent introduction (with Obsidius) of the terms "heavy splash damage (75%), “splash damage” (50%), and “light splash damage” (25%). For god’s sake, please DO NOT change the wording on this weapon to “full splash damage”; please leave that part of the wording as it is – nice and clear.
They are already struggling with consistently naming spell effects that do the same thing, I suspect your proposed change would add too much complexity. Especially when you consider that it needs to be translated to multiple languages.
There’s really a much simpler option that doesn’t need any words. Show the damage the spell is going to do right now, with all the boosts already factored in, possibly with a detailed summary when selecting the damage number. Not everybody likes to manually calculate whether Ubastet will deal enough damage for a double kill, then fail by 1 health due to rounding issues.
I totally agree that a damage calculator would be brilliant. I just don’t see it happening any time soon. It’s definitely a lot more work (and debugging) than adding a single word to a spell description.
With the translations, it’s hard to tell. The existing translations may already be better than the English text. If not, the change I’m suggesting is likely to be equally small in other languages. Of course, the translator might charge to retranslate the whole thing – it’s a weird industry.
In any case, I stand by my suggestion to add “other” to the spell text.
As for the terminology stuff, my Postscript probably wasn’t very clear. In essence, I really don’t want them to change the other parts of the text to be “seemingly” more consistent with other splash terminology.
