Encountered an interesting bug with how crits were registering on certain types of attacks depending on their damage type. It appears as if damaging abilities that aren't internal or elemental attacks(i.e force/tech, melee/ranged and energy/kinetic) are having crits registered improperly. This appears to be happening with all mobs types, I tested it on other players, the target dummies and non-player mobs and the issue was consistent across all types.

 

Here's an example of what was showing up in Starparse for my Lethality Operative when doing a flashpoint boss. From what I can gather it seems that something on the back end is reversing the registration of when an attack hits the target and when it crits. This also appears to be causing auto crits from the 6 piece set bonus that consume on these types to attacks to not consume the auto crit as seen Here with Corrosive Assault which is an energy attack while using Immolate which is an elemental attack still consumes the auto crit

 

Additionally it appears that non-auto crit abilities that fall under white damage are having some of their dmg absorbed. This rail shot registered in Starprarse as 100% miss and 0% crit even though it is clearly doing damage to the target.

 

Some Additional Screenshots of other attacks when they crit:

Cell Burst using auto crit

Retracable Blade DoT crit

Individual Rapid Shot hits

 

Would like to see if this is consistent across other classes and also if it is affecting healing abilities at all.

For reference, this might be related to the following change:

[W]e have one change planned for 5.9.2 which we hope will help their survivability in PvP. This will also help incentivize tanks to wear tanking gear in PvP.

 

• Critical hits are now affected by Shield / Absorb.
  

Currently, only regular hits from players can be impacted by shield procs. By including crits, this gives the potential for much more damage mitigation for tanks when being targeted by DPS classes. Here is a very basic example. Let’s say a normal hit would do 1,000 damage and a critical hit would do 2,000 damage. You are a tank and when your shield procs, you reduce damage by 25%. Previously you could reduce the normal hit to 750 damage, but would always take the 2,000 from a crit. After 5.9.2 you can also reduce the critical hit damage down to 1,500. This allows shield and absorb to be a direct counter-stat to Crit Rating for DPS classes.

What you are describing sounds like a bug but I haven't looked into it enough to comment on it.

I just wished to God that there would have been enough people on PTS when i was on at 5pm PST time or before and a bit after, so i could have tested this stuff. Every time i went to play pvp on PTS there were 3 or l0 people on. That's bad.

After some preliminary testing, I can confirm this bug. THIS IS A MAJOR BUG AND MUST BE FIXED BEFORE 5.9.2 IS RELEASED. If this goes live, it will impact anything from PvE to PvP. Healing appears to be fine, but all damage by players is bugged and results in much lower DPS numbers.

 

Specifically:

As of the fourth PTS patch, all players and NPCs, regardless of their toughness, now have a Shield Chance against all white damage (but not against yellow damage). In addition, crit chance appears to be bugged; DoTs and heals crit normally but direct attacks never crit.

This is clearly a bug. NPCs with elite toughness have 5% Defense Chance, and NPCs with champion toughness have 10% Defense Chance, but they should not have shield or absorb. Even on the PvP training dummy (which should have no Defense Chance) I still see absorbed attacks, so this has nothing to do with toughness.

Similarily, players that are specced as healer or DPS, or tanks that have no shield equipped, should have no Shield Chance (outside of some abilities/procs that grant them a temporary shield/absorb).

 

It is possible that Starparse is bugged because it doesn't expect crits to be absorbed, so I looked at the raw combat logs.

 

These logs are all from my Operative (skilled as healer at the moment):

 

Overload Shot is white damage. You can see that some attacks are absorbed, even though the Warzone Training Dummy should have no Shield Chance.

In addition, not a single attack is critting, even though I have a 40% crit chance. (I tested more than 4 times obviously)

 

[12:53:47.766] [@Tulexa Plus] [Warzone Training Dummy {2857781044445184}:144006028097] [Overload Shot {866410867720192}] [ApplyEffect {836045448945477}: Damage {836045448945501}] (3276 energy {836045448940874}) <3276>
[12:53:49.455] [@Tulexa Plus] [Warzone Training Dummy {2857781044445184}:144006028097] [Overload Shot {866410867720192}] [ApplyEffect {836045448945477}: Damage {836045448945501}] (4347 energy {836045448940874} - (2451 absorbed {836045448945511})) <4347>
[12:53:50.853] [@Tulexa Plus] [Warzone Training Dummy {2857781044445184}:144006028097] [Overload Shot {866410867720192}] [ApplyEffect {836045448945477}: Damage {836045448945501}] (4128 energy {836045448940874} - (2327 absorbed {836045448945511})) <4128>
[12:53:52.454] [@Tulexa Plus] [Warzone Training Dummy {2857781044445184}:144006028097] [Overload Shot {866410867720192}] [ApplyEffect {836045448945477}: Damage {836045448945501}] (3615 energy {836045448940874}) <3615>

 

Rifle Shot is my auto-shot. It is also white damage and should not be absorbed, yet it is absorbed according to in-game FlyText and according to combat logs.

Worse, sometimes the absorbed amount is higher than the damage, which should never happen. The in-game FlyText shows a negative number in this case.

Also, Rifle Shot never crits even though it should show some crits.

 

[12:55:57.142] [@Tulexa Plus] [Operations Training Dummy {2857785339412480}:144006032524] [Rifle Shot {948041016147968}] [ApplyEffect {836045448945477}: Damage {836045448945501}] (1109 energy {836045448940874}) <1109>
[12:55:57.142] [@Tulexa Plus] [Operations Training Dummy {2857785339412480}:144006032524] [Rifle Shot {948041016147968}] [ApplyEffect {836045448945477}: Damage {836045448945501}] (1295 energy {836045448940874} - (1857 absorbed {836045448945511})) <1295>
[12:55:58.541] [@Tulexa Plus] [Operations Training Dummy {2857785339412480}:144006032524] [Rifle Shot {948041016147968}] [ApplyEffect {836045448945477}: Damage {836045448945501}] (1451 energy {836045448940874} - (2081 absorbed {836045448945511})) <1451>
[12:55:58.542] [@Tulexa Plus] [Operations Training Dummy {2857785339412480}:144006032524] [Rifle Shot {948041016147968}] [ApplyEffect {836045448945477}: Damage {836045448945501}] (1247 energy {836045448940874}) <1247>
[12:55:59.941] [@Tulexa Plus] [Operations Training Dummy {2857785339412480}:144006032524] [Rifle Shot {948041016147968}] [ApplyEffect {836045448945477}: Damage {836045448945501}] (1393 energy {836045448940874}) <1393>
[12:55:59.942] [@Tulexa Plus] [Operations Training Dummy {2857785339412480}:144006032524] [Rifle Shot {948041016147968}] [ApplyEffect {836045448945477}: Damage {836045448945501}] (1576 energy {836045448940874} - (2260 absorbed {836045448945511})) <1576>
[12:56:01.325] [@Tulexa Plus] [Operations Training Dummy {2857785339412480}:144006032524] [Rifle Shot {948041016147968}] [ApplyEffect {836045448945477}: Damage {836045448945501}] (1287 energy {836045448940874}) <1287>
[12:56:01.326] [@Tulexa Plus] [Operations Training Dummy {2857785339412480}:144006032524] [Rifle Shot {948041016147968}] [ApplyEffect {836045448945477}: Damage {836045448945501}] (1635 energy {836045448940874} - (2345 absorbed {836045448945511})) <1635>
[12:56:02.767] [@Tulexa Plus] [Operations Training Dummy {2857785339412480}:144006032524] [Rifle Shot {948041016147968}] [ApplyEffect {836045448945477}: Damage {836045448945501}] (1296 energy {836045448940874}) <1296>
[12:56:02.768] [@Tulexa Plus] [Operations Training Dummy {2857785339412480}:144006032524] [Rifle Shot {948041016147968}] [ApplyEffect {836045448945477}: Damage {836045448945501}] (1344 energy {836045448940874}) <1344>
[12:56:04.158] [@Tulexa Plus] [Operations Training Dummy {2857785339412480}:144006032524] [Rifle Shot {948041016147968}] [ApplyEffect {836045448945477}: Damage {836045448945501}] (1463 energy {836045448940874} - (2097 absorbed {836045448945511})) <1463>
[12:56:04.158] [@Tulexa Plus] [Operations Training Dummy {2857785339412480}:144006032524] [Rifle Shot {948041016147968}] [ApplyEffect {836045448945477}: Damage {836045448945501}] (1514 energy {836045448940874} - (2171 absorbed {836045448945511})) <1514>

 

My yellow damage is never absorbed. On the operations dummy, sometimes my attack is fully resisted since I have less than 10% accuracy, which is correct. However, my crit chance is very low (around 10% even though it is 40% in the character sheet).

 

I'll have to do more testing and talk to some theorycrafters from my guild and my server, and will report back.

Edited July 29, 2018 by Jerba

I tested it on my Scoundrel and found the same bug.

 

In this fight (third in the list), I only used white damage abilities. You can clearly see that I had zero crits on the white damage, and if you go to log view, you can see that most of my attacks were absorbed. For my auto-attack, note how the absorb is higher than the actual damage. (In StarParse, I can see the Miss % of those absorbs, but Parsely shows 0% Miss).

 

In another fight (first in the list), I only used yellow damage abilities. You can see the 0% crit chance on all abilities except for DoTs, which crit correctly.

 

In addition, I found the following two lines in my combat log:

[15:52:39.580] [@Theho Bis] [Warzone Training Dummy {2857781044445184}:144006217920] [sucker Punch {985076519141376}] [ApplyEffect {836045448945477}: Damage {836045448945501}] (5771 kinetic {836045448940873}) <5771>
[15:52:45.281] [@Theho Bis] [Warzone Training Dummy {2857781044445184}:144006217920] [sucker Punch {985076519141376}] [ApplyEffect {836045448945477}: Damage {836045448945501}] (9281 kinetic {836045448940873} -) <9281>

Note the additional " -" at the end of the second line, referring to an unknown mitigation. Apparently, critical hits are not marked with the * star but as an unknown mitigation. For heals and DoTs, the critical hits are still marked with a *.

Edited July 29, 2018 by Jerba

I talked to other players and we have come to the following conclusion:

 

• Heals and DoT damage (I/E) work correctly.
  
• Yellow damage from direct attacks appears to work correctly but there is a display bug: Critical hits are not displayed in the larger font size, and are not recorded as critical hits in the combat log. Instead, critical hits are written into the combat log as unknown mitigation (just a " -" with no mitigation type behind it).
  From time to time, the damage does appear to crit (the damage number is roughly twice as high as usual), so this is just a display bug. However, since some specs have procs that rely on critical hits, these specs may be bugged if the "critical hit" is not registered as a real critical hit..
  
• White damage is totally bugged. (Nearly) all E/K attacks are absorbed, except for critical hits. Critical hits appears to be fine; they don't show the absorbed message and the font size is slightly larger.
  Sometimes, the absorbed amount is higher than the actual damage; in this case the FlyText shows a negative number but the target still loses health, it does not gain health.
  

 

To fix this, please ensure that:

Critical hits are always correctly displayed for Force/Tech damage (yellow damage), and that white E/K damage is not absorbed.

 

This bug must be treated as a release blocker and should not reach the live servers.

Edited July 31, 2018 by Jerba

This bug must be treated as a release blocker and should not reach the live servers.

That's right

Hey folks,

 

The team is aware of the shielding issue and working on a fix ahead of 5.9.2. Thanks for the info!

 

-eric

Great to hear, thanks for the fast reply! Dev responses are always more satisfying than reading it in the patch notes.

Edited July 30, 2018 by Jerba