Snapshotting

"

2i0 wrote:

btw you guys(GGG) read your forums or just reddit? it seems you just care about reddit and twitch, all the recent changes/nerfs were related to twitch instead of PoE feedback, go check the Bug report section more often.

We read the forums a lot, and post on them. A few devs also read the reddit, and Chris in particular will post there if, in his off time while reading it, he sees something he can easily answer.
The forums are our primary means of communication and feedback gathering with players.

"

bobohobo wrote:

Hi, I love the fact that this is changing. I had my fun with burning miscreation snapshotting once and that was great but so relieved the tedious tactic is being removed. awesome.

I didn't see it mentioned earlier and I could have missed it but with the minions and RF being dynamically effected by stat changes, will curses on the player affect their minions/RF eg. temp chains, slowing the minions/lowering RF dmg?

If so, will a curse on the player and the minions stack on the minions?

Curses still only affect the thing that was cursed.
If we made a curse in future that gave "reduced minion damage" or similar, then being cursed with that would cause your minions to lose damage, but I don't think that's likely to be implemented - it's very narrow.

"

bobohobo wrote:

Very amped for the changes, thanks for the write up

No problem!

"

litesabr wrote:

After reading Mark's replies about righteous fire so far, I still am unclear on a point. If I socket RF + Empower + Enhance + Increased AOE in my offhand weapon that has +1 skill gems, will RF keep all the bonuses granted from the gems (including the +1 gem level) once cast and swapped back to primary weapon? Will the spell damage buffs from RF still be increased?

Yes, under the current system. Because the gem is removed, the in-progress action can't tell anything about the gem any more - including it's current (increased) level or what supports are on it - so it's forced to use the state it was in when it was last equipped.

It now sounds like Carl and Rory are keen for more changes to RF to make this less possible/useful, so that may not still be the case by the time the patch is deployed. I'll do my best to keep you guys posted.

"

Klimentiy wrote:

"

litesabr wrote:

After reading Mark's replies about righteous fire so far, I still am unclear on a point. If I socket RF + Empower + Enhance + Increased AOE in my offhand weapon that has +1 skill gems, will RF keep all the bonuses granted from the gems (including the +1 gem level) once cast and swapped back to primary weapon? Will the spell damage buffs from RF still be increased?

Reply to this please.

I might actually consider starting playing again in August, even tho my current character utilizing snapshotting auras.

Ha! beat you to posting :P

EDIT: I'll probably be leaving for the night soon - I'll keep a vague eye on the thread at home, but probably more long replies until I get to work tomorrow, and I won't be checking my PMs much if at all until then. I will do my best to read through everything posted in the meantime and reply to as much as is practical.

Please keep the feedback coming, and don't hesitate to keep asking questions. I think I'm up to date with most of them now, but feel free to let me know if there's some I missed.

"

robmafia wrote:

"

Mark_GGG wrote:

(evasive crap)

*ahem*

from post 1:


The majority of snapshotting is used in minion builds. Support gems and minion-augmenting items are swapped in and out to summon large numbers of unusually strong zombies and spectres without worrying about any of the item downsides.

To be fair, the very next sentence is

"

Raising a spectre and swapping out supports to raise a spectre of a different type allows spectres raised from the same gem to benefit from an entirely different set of support gems.

- as an example of another advantage gained from snapshotting.

I'm worried our correspondence is starting to take up too much of the thread. If you'd like to discuss further where the miscommunication between us began and (hopefully) resolve it, please feel free to PM me.

"

elitedesolator wrote:

Hey Mark,

Thanks so much for answering all of our questions. Must be tiring given the varying degrees of quality from this thread's questions.

No problem. It's been an experience, to be sure, but I do relish these opportunities to interact with the community.

"

elitedesolator wrote:

I'm interested to hear about (potentially) more changes to RF's snapshotting. We've already established that activating RF then replacing it with a completely unrelated set of skill and support gems (hell, even a Kaom's) WILL STILL WORK under the (currently) planned changes.

zSavage has also posted another similar question in another thread:
snip

My assumption based on the information in this thread is that this will also WORK. And I'm also assuming that the dev team DOESN'T want that to work, but it's a much more technically challenging case to tackle.

We don't (ideally) want Righteous Fire to be able to snapshot. We do want Righteous Fire to not be something you can "turn off" by just removing the gem - it's a fundamental part of the skill's design that you must either include elements in your build that allow you to manage it, or suffer the burning until your last life point.

These two goals are somewhat at odds, as the basic non-snapshotting version on Righteous Fire would be one that did turn off when you removed it's gem.

Technical stuff:
Under the new system, the action-in-progress is notified that its skill has been modified, and passed a pointer to the new, up-to-date skill. In the case of the gem being removed, this is a null pointer, indicating the old skill been replaced with nothing rather than a new version.
Most skills react to this notification by updating their own internal skill reference to the new pointer, and deleting if it was null. Righteous Fire instead will, if passed a null pointer, keep its current pointer to the old skill. While that skill is no longer available to your character to use, it will still exist as long as the action-in-progress maintains a pointer to it.
So the RF action-in-progress in this case keeps its pointer to the obsolete skill. That skill contains all the stats of the skill gem and support gems that make it up, and also is linked to your character's stats. Since the skill is no longer tied to a gem, changes to the gem can't update the skill (including changes to what's linked to the gem). Because the skill is still linked to your character's stats, it will still update based on changes to those (gear, passives, etc).
Making it lose all the support gems would require that instead it created it's own new skill, based on the one it has, but without the supports included, and then kept a pointer to that. But creating a new skill is technically more challenging and would cause some problems.

We're currently looking into some solutions like keeping the part where it burns yourself, but removing the enemy burning and/or spell damage, so you couldn't escape burning yourself, but do need to keep the gem socketed to get actual use out of it. At this point I can't say if that's the path we'll take or not, or even if anything will change from the article before 1.2.0. As I said, I'll do my best to keep you guys up to date.

I'M BACK, BABY!

*ahem*

In no particular order (because I opened all these in tabs and the order got mixed up in the process)

"

1988288 wrote:

"

Mark_GGG wrote:

Have you not found the zombie life bonus from the item significant in your play?

Using this calculator: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/860989 , would appreciate if you look at the formulas and see if it gets something wrong.

Will do, thanks!

"

Rob2655 wrote:

"

Mark_GGG wrote:

Your Animate Guardian's equipment will persist on logout, but due to the snapshotting changes we're making, it won't immediately appear when you leave town. Players will now be able to retrieve their guardian by targeting a blank space of ground and casting the Animate Guardian skill.

I understood everything and i like that snapshotting will be disabled but i think the need to recast you guardian each time you enter a new area is kind of annoying.

It's not each time you enter a new area, just the first time after you log in. If you have an active guardian, it will transition like any other minion into non-town areas. The only change is that when you first log in, it won't automatically be active, and will need resummoned once.

"

DucksHaveLowAPM wrote:

If you are looking into Righteous Fire please change the wording from:
Engulfs you in magical fire that rapidly burns you and nearby enemies. Your spell damage is substantially increased while under this effect. The effect ends when you have 1 life remaining

To: (...) The effect ends when you have 0 energy shield and 1 life remaining.

It doesn't actually check that though - the code only ever looks at your life.

"

Waves_blade wrote:

Enlighten is the gem that increases gem XP right?

So, if its supporting gems in the none-active weapon set, does it even work?

Yes. It would even work if the item was in your main inventory, or on the ground, if there was a way for gems there to gain XP.

"

Waves_blade wrote:

How about if said item has +1 to gem levels?

Will the Enlighten register the +1 to gem levels if the weapon is not actually active?

Yes. If you socket a gem in any such item, it will skill have that bonus from the item, even when the item is not equipped.

"

No gear snapshot, just gems sharing, let's say i put tempset shield in a 4L,
TS + Life Leech + Added Lightning + reduced mana
I hit the skill button, it reserve my mana and is active. If i remove the support, will TS desactivate?

If you remove a support, TS will cease to gain any benefit from it, and the reserve will change to reflect it's no longer being in effect.
So if you remove reduced mana, TS's reserve will increase to reflect that. If you removed Added Lightning, TS's mana reserve will reduce due to the multipler being removed, and it will no longer deal extra damage.

"

Mizzajl wrote:

"

Mark_GGG wrote:

Minions generated with a set level will not increase in level when the gem enabling them levels up. If such a gem levels up while you have minions active, the change in minion level will only be reflected in newly-raised minions.

Why? :(

Because levels on monsters are part of what type of thing they are. A level 42 Zombie has the object type "Zombie@42". Unlike players, where level is just a stat, a monster's level is a fundamental part of what type of thing it is, and cannot be changed. We'd like to have them update, but we can't.

"

Mizzajl wrote:

What about Auras? If I'm using Anger level 10 and it levels up, do I have to recast it? or if when I level up I get some aura affecting passive?

Auras don't have their own levels like monsters do - levelling the gem just changes stats, which will update automatically.

"

Bada_Bing wrote:

How will poison trapster like RaizQT's build of the week s2e6 be affected by that? Will the poison cloud still get the benefit of the traps's more damage? After all it isn't the trap that releases the cloud but the arrow that gets released by the trap.

The poison cloud is still part of the skill the trap used, it will be affected.

"

Sneakypaw wrote:

But the trap and mine support don't state Mine/Trap Damage. They only state X% more damage.

That will no longer be the case.

"

Sneakypaw wrote:

So the part of "is not "trap damage" or "mine damage" so will not be affected by modifiers to either" should not affect minions.

These will not apply to skills used by minions, as those skills didn't come directly from a trap/mine.

Like the poison cloud, it's a direct effect of the skill being used by the trap mine.

"

winniethewhor wrote:

"

Mark_GGG wrote:

Like the poison cloud, it's a direct effect of the skill being used by the trap mine.

Then will trap/mine still effect zombies since they don't use skills? Or is it because the zombies are a new object and not flagged as part of the trap/mine?

Zombies do use skills - the basic melee attack is still a skill, just not an exciting one. The point is that that's the zombie performing an action, not the trap/mine, so it won't count as trap/mine damage.

"

Moose65 wrote:

Mark, would still like some clarification if Remote Mine + Trap combo no longer works for direct damage spells. I understand that their not allowed to double dip from passives anymore, but do you also lose the support damage from Remote Mines more multiplier?

Yes. The damage skill was cast by the trap, not by the mine, so will not receive mine damage bonuses (which will include the multiplicative damage multiplier on the support gem).

"

winniethewhor wrote:

EDIT: I've also had a hard time understand these different spectre changes too. Can I only spectre one type of monster now per gem? I understand I can't change the links around, but can I summmon X different spectres still?

Yes, you can summon whichever set of spectres you want. However, like other skills, you can only have one set of supports in effect per active skill gem.

Thanks peachii for trying to keep things on track over the weekend.