Thorium Fist Elite Bug

[LuxanQualta]

At level 18-2 I've noticed that when Thorium Fist is pared with the Annihilation Mech in the mission, the Thorium Fist inherits the suppression capabilities of the Mech and has them even when the Mech is nowhere to be seen. I don't mind a challenge but when you get six ghost form Thorium Fist elites with suppression in addition to their normal abilities, it simply is impossible to do more than watch your heroes die one after the other in a couple of seconds. This happened to a squad with levels 185, 186, and 188 with the catalyst grid loaded and star-crossed. Where's the fun in that? (This same team in that mission went through the ambush without a sweat unphased by the hoardes or elites.) Something is wrong with a level when it becomes unplayable under those circumstances.

This combined with the related glitch described at viewtopic.php?f=32&t=7194&p=69750#p69750 is starting to become pretty annoying.

[Inquisitor_Laine]

...Aren't the Thorium Fist's the little sods who taunt you?

If so, that's not Supression. Taunt forces you to auto-attack whoever taunted.

If I'm wrong & the land of sleeps is reducing my thought process, I'll look into this more...but I'm fairly confident I'm right x3.

[LuxanQualta]

Right the little buggers taunt and force an auto-attack, which is fine. What I'm running into with the elites is that the behavior is exactly the same as an annihilation mech where you cannot switch heroes, you cannot use any special ability, you can only use basic slug/shot or whatever you hero's basic ability is. So, for example, Wraith can only swing his axe and cannot siphon.

If you can move back from the elite Thorium Fist, you can fire up a special ability with Zren or others and move back in exactly the same as for a annihilation mech using suppression. However, if you are surrounded, you can do nothing. Exact same behavior. The elites were not taunting. Normally you will see "taunt" text from the little guys and I used to see it for the elites, but now I do not. Apparently, there is some kind of bleed-over/transference going on.

This really stinks for Wraith because you can't far enough fast enough to identify the target and start siphoning with a single Elite Thorium Fist because as soon as one is within a few meters you are suppressed. This occurs before taunt range - farther out.

I've been seeing all sorts of flakey behavior including the little episode in the video in the thread I linked.

I've been seeing what I call "Skating" where the character freezes like a statute and moves without any animation whatsoever and loses all abilities. The only thing to do then is switch to a different hero.

There are also problems with being in sync with object locations where you have a hero behaving as though he ran into a wall or obstruction way before he actually is close to it.

All this has only been happening since the last patch. Before that all was good. Had no real complaints per se.

[Inquisitor_Laine]

I dunno, we'd have to get some other opinions & tests done on the matter because it just sounds like they're taunting you but you seem to believe otherwise.

I can't test it myself (not right now, at least) but I know someone who'll slave over it, he can have a look later.

Client<->Server desync does happen on occasion & it's as often the clients fault as the servers, unfortunately. Just have to tweak with your own shazam to see better results, though sometimes it will be the server at fault.

I don't think I've heard of this "skating" either...it's curious. I know sometimes heroes can stop animating but that's a problem in ALL games that, really just can't be avoided as it's down to client appearance but...losing all the ability to act as well? It might be worth expanding on it.

[Mysteryem]

Actually, if you're taunted, you seem to attack the enemy which has built up the highest 'threat' on your hero so far. If an enemy has been repeatedly attacking you for a while, and then you get taunted by another enemy, instead of attacking the one that taunted you, you attack the one which has been doing the damage beforehand. This is most noticable when a ranged enemy has been doing the most damage to you before hand, because when taunted, you will be forced to run over to that enemy and then attack them.

More onto the issues at hand, I can't say I've witnessed any of these, when you're taunted, a large ! should be above your head, and on the right of the screen, a similar icon which describes the debuff should be displayed. Suppresion has a different icon in both places. If you can look at it above your hero and on the right of the screen, you should be able to determine what debuff it is.

The alternative, is that you've lagged and desynced with the server, causing the suppresion mechanoid to be in different places on the server and client. Even if you can't see it, if you can work out its position, you can attack the air where it should be, and it will do damage to it. I had a grapling pulsar yesterday which was in different places, on the server, it was ontop of the cliff with me, but on the client, I saw it in a lower area beyond the cliff face.

[LuxanQualta]

Thanks guys!

I didn't see the mark over the hero's head when this happened. Wish I had paid attention to the debuff icons, but don't remember them.

What was weird was the inability to use any special capability or switch heroes. Was definitely like being around a suppression mech. Understand about characters being invisible due to desync - have had that before with elites and could only tell from catching fire or being poisoned.

If I can get a vid capture of the skating I will post it. Happens sort of randomly and didn't notice it until 18-3 and after the last patch. Actually it is pretty funny to see, if you aren't too serious about the mission and can sit back an laugh.

[LuxanQualta]

Finally got a video capture of Zrin skating as promised.

[Mysteryem]

And you lose all abilities when this happens? Normally when your animations freeze it's because your animation has been interrupted, or it started and, due to lag most probably, was unable to complete, often because an enemy is actually slightly out of range. But in this normal occurance, all of your abilities still work fine and using any of them or attacking with your basic attack will get your animations to work again.

The most common cases of the animations freezing up like this, are with Goliath's shockwave, Skar's shadow sting and Seraph's auto-turret.

The only other occurance which might be like this, is when you lose connection, using an attack or ability will often freeze yur animation, and you will be unable to use another attack for a few seconds. (all of the attacks will fail though, since you're not connected)

Is the 'skating' connected to the Thorium Fists at all in this case?

[LuxanQualta]

Losing all abilities was related to encounters with Thorium Fists. In this case of skating, which I put up just to show what I was talking about, the abilities remain intact, but the basic ability is lost.

This is not a connection issue so far as I can tell. It can always be fixed by switching heroes. It seems to only happen at 18-x levels and so far I've only seen it with Sentinels like Zrin and Magnos. Whenever this happens, I switch out and all is good. The only other hint of an issue with this skating is that the sound starts to stick/repeat like a damaged record on an old phonograph. This seems more an issue with the program than connection. For grins I did some pings and couldn't see any connection issue.

So far as I know the issues are independent of each other, but both occur mostly at 18-3 in the mandated mission. Now that I have finally got through that, I will try out the level again with other missions and see if it was just that specific venue of the mission.

Also both of these issues almost always happen in the same locations on the platform in the mission. The first buggy area is as you come down the hill to the first platform entrance in the middle area of the mission (2nd area) and the other area is the one shown in the video which is just before the tunnel to the 3rd area before where you find the red portal.

So what I think at this point is that maybe the mission venue is buggy and that Thorium Fist may still be an issue.