11 replies to this topic

[sylverfyre]

When you use Sight Blaster and walk up to a trap or a player wearing a GTB, the Sight Blaster activates and attempts to attack the trap or player. Because the target cannot be damaged properly the charge on sight blaster is never consumed, and the wizard's Sight Blaster continues to attempt to attack the target at 50 times per second. This opens up the window to several exploits.

The current exploit involving this is using this with an Eraser staff, which grants a low chance of casting a screen-wide AOE SP-drain when you do magic damage. Normally this has a reasonable chance of firing off when you hit a group with an AoE spell, but when using it with Sight Blaster on a pile of talkie boxes, you are performing several hundred magic attacks per second for an extended period of time, and the Area SP-drain fires off many times per second.

Another past exploit involving sight blaster, which was long-since hotfixed, used Sight Blaster against a GTB user to proc the AOE Curse effect on a +9 Lich Bone Wand, and this was fixed by the Lich Wand's effect being removed in WoE.

I propose the hotfix solution of treating Sight Blaster as the problem, rather than each individual area effect as the problem. If Sight Blaster were a disabled skill in WoE, it would prevent exploits, both current and future such as this, while allowing the Eraser to continue to function as intended and be an interesting choice of weapon for its area SP draining powers.


The reasons I believe disabling Sight Blaster are three-fold.

One, this behavior of Sight Blaster is not in line with the original design of the skill. The skill is designed to strike once, and then for the skill's buff to be consumed.

Two, It's the only skill that has this effect where it is merely activated and hits 50 times per second per invalid target. The only other skill that behaved in this manner is Heat, which was balanced to only hit 5 times per second instead of 50. Thus, the game designers don't intend for any skill to be able to hit at 50 times per second.

Finally, Sight Blaster's intended usage is to knockback an enemy that gets too close to the wizard. Since knockback effects are disabled in WoE, this usage doesn't apply anyway; Sight Blaster is not a useful part of a Wizard's kit in siege outside of creating exploits such as these two. In fact, it's often detrimental to maintain Sight Blaster up-time because Sight Blaster triggering will consume any mystic amplification effects on you.


EDIT: So I sent a ticket in last night shortly after maint started with this exact content. Apparently the GMs listened, <3 <3 <3

Sight Blaster cannot be used in woe maps now.

Edited by sylverfyre, 29 February 2012 - 01:22 PM.

[Lambor]

I saw this last Sat WoE on Ymir. =\

[Xellie]

agree with this, there have been SB exploits since the lich bone wand came into game.

I recall once heim mentioning that using it would be bannable.

[darktie22]

They should stop exploits, but sight blaster is actualy usefull for wizards in woe. it grants you a free hit on whoever get close to you, so i find 2 main purpouses for it:

1- Perma sigh against cloackers, even if youre not recasting sigh every 5 secs, having sightblaster up grants you the ability to uncloack any gx that comes near you since sb will hit them.
2- Interruption hit on any class that is casting near you. Pretty situational, but just walking near some1 casting, sb will hit him and interrupt (if possible). Can seem useless, but actualy saved me from a bunch of gfists.

Won't be a big issue having it dissabled, but looking other solution would be better (like reducing hits per second to 1?... It actualy doesnt matter since its supposed to hit only once).

Oh, and also if youre near some1 under white imprision, or near a sc with deadly infection or shadow form on (not sure which of those triggers it) sb will also make an infinite number of "miss" hits

Edited by darktie22, 29 February 2012 - 12:59 PM.

[CeruleanGamer]

Why are all the exploits found on classes that suck ass anyway? Let them have it so they can actually kill people in WoE.

[DrAzzy]

Just remove sightblaster in woe.

The skill's actual utility in WoE is trivial, except for exploits.

Remove sightblaster, and reenable the Lich Wand effect on woe maps.

[ChrisWintermoon]

You can't imagine how bad kRO is facepalming themselfs everytime iRO is report an exploit to them.
We are really innovative and ground-breaking when it comes to find and exploit bugs to their maximum
Frankly, they should hire us as their Beta-Tester. No Exploit or Bug could ever hide - we would find them all!

Edited by ChrisWintermoon, 29 February 2012 - 01:11 PM.

[sylverfyre]

They should stop exploits, but sight blaster is actualy usefull for wizards in woe. it grants you a free hit on whoever get close to you, so i find 2 main purpouses for it:

1- Perma sigh against cloackers, even if youre not recasting sigh every 5 secs, having sightblaster up grants you the ability to uncloack any gx that comes near you since sb will hit them.
2- Interruption hit on any class that is casting near you. Pretty situational, but just walking near some1 casting, sb will hit him and interrupt (if possible). Can seem useless, but actualy saved me from a bunch of gfists.

Won't be a big issue having it dissabled, but looking other solution would be better (like reducing hits per second to 1?... It actualy doesnt matter since its supposed to hit only once).

Oh, and also if youre near some1 under white imprision, or near a sc with deadly infection or shadow form on (not sure which of those triggers it) sb will also make an infinite number of "miss" hits

Thanks for letting me know that it interacts with White Imprison like that, I didn't even know that one.

Honestly, using sightblaster as a "sight" in woe isn't very useful - the range is only 1 cell around you (as opposed to 3 for sight and 2 for ruwach) and it doesn't uncloak people who are using "Hide" - only stealth/cloak type mechanics where any aoe spells work. And if any aoe spell works, then you can just use SG1 or whatever. If they're wearing GTB, neither sightblaster nor your standard aoe spells work anyway.

[sylverfyre]

Just remove sightblaster in woe.

The skill's actual utility in WoE is trivial, except for exploits.

Remove sightblaster, and reenable the Lich Wand effect on woe maps.

So apparently they already did this last night - I sent a ticket in with the same text as the OP, i decided to post it here to expose it to everybody.

Editing OP as appropriate.

Sight Blaster can no longer be used on woe maps.

[Myzery]

ANYTHING TO WIN

[Xellie]

wonder why it wasn't fixed like this when we reported it in 2007. -.-

[GuardianTK]

wonder why it wasn't fixed like this when we reported it in 2007. -.-

My theory is that 1/10 of the CS team that answers the tickets are people who actually do something about the ticket. The rest just ignore and copy paste knowledge base stuff.