Harm Touch Issues:

[So_1337]

Greetings! I originally posted this over at PEQ, but it was a year and a half ago. The emulator has come a long way since then, and I think SKs have been pretty patient, so I thought I'd re-post this to possibly get them some love =)

Quick thing about Harm Touch; it's mostly eye candy. That's why I haven't worried about it. There are many more AAs to buy first. A Shadow Knight could definitely be well served by buying many other AAs, but it'd be great to see some real usefulness from the ability.

There are a few different varieties and we'll discuss each. Regular Harm Touch is the one that every Shadow Knight gets at level 1. From what I've been able to tell, the damage on this version is just a little bit weak. It's consistently hitting for 650 at level 65 with no AA or gear enhancements. The formula being used here on EQEmu seems to be (Level x 10) = HT Damage. That's very close to what it should be, at least through level 40. This page has a great chart at the bottom that explains the formula very well. Just to put the information in one place:

(Level * 10) + ((Level - 40) * 20) + 1 = Damage
So at level 1, you are doing (1 * 10) + 1 = 11 damage.
At level 45 you are doing (45 * 10) + ((45 - 40) * 20) + 1 = 551 damage.
At level 60 you are doing (60 * 10) + ((60 - 40) * 20) + 1 = 1001 damage

The part that troubles me about this is that I thought spell data was taken directly from the spell files, which should mean that there's no modification required. If that's the case, how is it that we aren't doing the damage we should be? I don't know the answer to that, which is why I'm the lackey telling you guys what's wrong, and you're the ones fixing things :P

Moving onto Improved Harm Touch (formerly known as Super Harm Touch):

Originally Posted by Source

Improved Harm Touch - Type: Activated, Refresh Time: 72 mins.; Max - 1; Cost - 6; Requirements: Level - 59, Must spend 12 ability points in the Archetype Abilities; This ability gives you a low-resist Harm Touch. Using this ability also uses your existing Harm Touch timer.

This gives you a new ability that you can use instead of the regular Harm Touch. Its damage is disease-based and thus very very hard for NPCs to resist. This part works fine, other than the damage it deals:

Originally Posted by Source

Unholy Touch. Ranks 1/2/3 Costs 2/4/6.
A further enhancement to Improved Harm Touch, this ability grants a considerable bonus to the amount of damage done by that ability. You gain the ability to train an additional rank at levels 61, 63, and 65.

This adds 450 base damage to Improved Harm Touch per rank, and causes a guaranteed critical blast with SCF1. Total damage for a critical is (1050 + 450 * rank) * 1.5 if using unholy aura * ( 2 + random( .01, focus percent ( + .50 if unholy ) ) ).

Improved Harm Touch with no AA adjustments at level 65 deals 910 damage. Ranks 1-3 of this ability do not modify the damage at all when purchased, nor do they cause a critical. Results should look like this:

• Unmodified, Improved Harm Touch hits for 1050.
• With rank 1 of Unholy Touch, Improved Harm Touch hits for 1500 (and the automatic critical should take it to 3000 if at least rank 1 of Spell Casting Fury is trained).
• With rank 2 of Unholy Touch, Improved Harm Touch hits for 1950 (and the automatic critical should take it to 3900 if at least rank 1 of Spell Casting Fury is trained).
• With rank 3 of Unholy Touch, Improved Harm Touch hits for 2400 (and the automatic critical should take it to 4800 if at least rank 1 of Spell Casting Fury is trained).

Another thing that's an issue is that the Unholy Aura discipline does not do as much damage as it ought to. Unholy Aura currently works for our lifetap spells and regular Harm Touch, but is only giving a 25% increase. Touch of Innoruuk, unmodified by AAs or focus effects, hits for 509. With Unholy Aura on, it hits for 763. We previously discussed that Harm Touch did 650 damage at level 65; with Unholy Aura on, it does 975 damage. It should be a 50% increase in damage, as you'll notice from the full formula for Improved Harm Touch damage in the passage quoted above.

Lastly, we need to talk about Leech Touch (formerly known as Leech Curse, and a dozen other things; even the actual spell name is listed as "Life Curse" in game). It should do 900 damage, every time, if it isn't modified by AAs. It has the ability to crit with both direct damage AAs and exceptional healing AAs. (I can verify that it both crits the DD portion at times and the exceptional heal, so those are working currently.)

Originally Posted by Source

Consumption of the Soul is an upgrade to the Leech Touch that adds 200 additional damage/healing power per rank gained up to 3 ranks, so that at 65th with 3 ranks in this AA, Leech Touch would do up to 1500 damage/self heal.

I know there was a fix to this by KLS awhile back. In fact, let me grab the patch notes:

==01/22/2008
KLS: Clients will be immune to proximity aggro until they are finished loading now.
KLS: Slightly reduced the melee accuracy of clients.
KLS: Melee mitigation should now properly enforce minimum damage.
KLS: Increased the level based damage bonus for high level characters in melee combat.
KLS: Removed tic by tic healing aggro.
KLS: Fixed several potential crashes in various parts of the code.
KLS: (Knightly)Merchants will now use their clean names when conversing with players.
KLS: Fixed some improper casting in the GMSummon code.
KLS: Figured in a work around for corpses between the server and client becoming unsynced for /corpse
KLS: AA Consumption of the soul should now function correctly.
KLS: AA Soul Abrasion should now function correctly

Unfortunately, I didn't test this at the time it was implemented. Now, I'm finding that it might actually be working in the reverse:

• Unmodified, Leech Touch hits/heals for 899.
• With rank 1 of Consumption of the Soul, Leech Touch hits/heals for 399.
• With rank 2 of Consumption of the Soul, Leech Touch fails to do damage. (The mob still is shown as staggering and it aggros as if it was hit by damage.)
• With rank 3 of Consumption of the Soul, Leech Touch fails to do damage. (The mob still is shown as staggering and it aggros as if it was hit by damage.)

The results should look like these:

• Unmodified, Leech Touch hits/heals for 900.
• With rank 1 of Consumption of the Soul, Leech Touch hits/heals for 1100.
• With rank 2 of Consumption of the Soul, Leech Touch hits/heals for 1300.
• With rank 3 of Consumption of the Soul, Leech Touch hits/heals for 1500.

Okay. I think that's everything. Sorry if this seems overwhelming, but I wanted to get this right, and to save you from having to do too much digging on your own. You're doing the hard part of fixing things, I figure it's only right that I do some leg-work to help.

Please reply back with any questions, and I'd love to see some replies from other shadow knights who will know this information much better than I. Archedgar and token419 in particular should both have some experience to either correct me or back me up on these. Thanks for reading, and thanks for working so hard to set everything right.

[Boomlaor]

Touch of the Wicked:

This AA is supposed to reduce the reuse time on all Harm Touch based abilities. I've purchased 2 levels of it so far and had no change to the 72 min reuse time.

[Shin Noir]

Boomlaor posting twice doesn't give you brownie points.

Let me know if any other devs are planning to work on SK AA's and such as noted above. If nobody speaks up, I'll jump into it So_1337.

[So_1337]

Reno has been putting some work into it, and I've taught myself to compile and am trying to get up to speed on some of the basics of this. I'm available to do testing and have given Reno's recent code a try, but I'm still a long way from doing much about this myself. Thanks for anything you can offer, I'm having a blast just learning about this as I go =)

[Shin Noir]

Oh. I see not only did Boomlaor double post his AA thing, but he also necro posted a 2 month old thread. Heh.