Whirling Blades

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Make sure you concisely state your character build, level, and other complimenting abilities you have when you talk about a skill - The more we know about your character, the better we can understand your feedback.

You hit each monster you pass through as you move. You can't hit the same monster more than once with the same skill use.

When dual wielding, hits are dealt with either the main or off hand weapon, chosen at random.

Attack speed increases the speed of the entire animation (and your movement), including the 'recovery' part at the end.

A bug has been discovered with this skill - it was alternating weapons even in cases when you weren't dual wielding - so if you were using a shield, or just had nothing in your off hand, you'd deal no damage on half the hits. This is fixed for an upcoming patch.

I'm still working on tracking down some other weirdness with it's target selection.

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Ambrose151 wrote:

So I wonder if because my characters "back" is to the mobs if the server/client are having a hard time predicting who is going to get hit, especially if I spam the skill.

This would seem to explain a lot of the results people are having with this skill. Ofcouse my tests were very crude, so it might not be this at all.

The facing of your character is an entirely graphical thing which has no effect on the execution of Whirling Blades.

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Ambrose151 wrote:

If the direction your character is facing is purely graphical, then how does the combat predictor work? If I have mobs in front of me and behind me, how can it predict, with any sort of reliablity, which ones I am going to attack.

It doesn't predict which one's you're "going to attack". It predicts which ones will be hit by the attack you're performing, and that attack is always in a direction (which is not necessarily the same or related to the direction your character happens to be facing).

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Ambrose151 wrote:

Paraphrasing here, but a GGG member said with combat prediction was easy with melee since it would be the mob standing in front of your character. That doesn't imply that your directionality is purely graphical.

"In front" in this context means "in the direction the attack is being performed". Since the character rotates to match the direction you attacked, this will be in front of the character by the time you hit, but it's the character's facing changing to match where they attacked, not the other way around.

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Ambrose151 wrote:

How are critial/hits calulated? Is it one check for every mob that might be hit? Often times I will hit or miss every mob, or critical every mob from an attack. At times it seems there is one check for each WB attack. Not a different check for every mob that might get hit by a WB attack. (this could just be a desync issue.)

Exactly the same as all other skills. One crit roll is made for the skill, and that crit roll is compared against your chance to score a critical on each enemy hit. Unless there is something causing you to score more criticals on particular monsters, you'll crit all or none together because they all check the same roll.

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Ambrose151 wrote:

How is damage calculated? On my shadow, the dps of WB is higher than the dps venom strike. WB can often take 3 to 5 hits (I look to see the mob actually took damage and it wasn't a miss) to kill a mob, yet venom strike will often kill the mob instantly. When I check the character screen for the damage each skill does it is nearly identical.

DPS display cannot factor whirling blade's duration to get the correct value *(yet - this is coming). Whirling blades deals damage from your weapon, modified by the modifiers shown on the gem, to each monster you hit.

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Ambrose151 wrote:

First: So there isn't a "prediction" until I make the attack? The point of the prediction is to reduce lag..

I guess I am not understanding the mechanic here.

Prediction means we calculate in advance the damage that would be dealt with the attack before the point it would be applied. When you start the attack, the server rolls the damage for the attack on each monster then, and sends it to the client. The client recieves these damages and stores them, then the damage is applied, both on the server and client, at the point of impact.

If something happens that would prevent the hit landing (enemy moved out of range, you were stunned, etc), the damage which was calculated and sent is discarded and not applied.

Doing this means that we can avoid lag which would happen if we didn't calculate damage until we knew you actually dealt it, at the point of impact, as then we'd have to send it at that point from the server, and it would take time to reach the client. By the time you connect, the client (probably, depending on latency) already has the damage calculated for that attack.

As a counterexample, in a certain other game that's popular right now, once an attack is started on an enemy in range, no amount of moving out-of-range will prevent it landing on that enemy when it contacts. Our system is more complicated but allows us to calculate damage in advance but then not apply it if something happens between calculating it and when it would be applied that causes the attack to fail.

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Ambrose151 wrote:

Why is there only one crit roll? If I understand you correctly, there is a hit/miss roll for each mob that "might" be hit, but then only one crit roll for every mob hit? No offence, but that seems a bit... lazy.

Because that's how it was decided critical hits work in this game. It's unlikely to change. It used to work differently but was changed for multiple reasons, and we're more happy with the impact of crits now - when you crit with Ice Nova, you freeze everything around you, which makes the event more impactful. It also reduces the frequency of crits while not reducing the frequency of critically striking a particular monster, which is desirable for balance. I don't understand how picking a specific way for crits to work is "lazy". This system takes slightly more work to implement than just rolling separately for each monster.

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Cruxation wrote:

I am truly amazed this skill does not work with duel wield.

It does