foof's recent work on heal spells (good job btw) reminded me that wards are not yet implemented. It has been months since I played live and when I did I didn't pay attention to wards that much so I could use all details about how they work.

I know you can have a single target and group ward up at the same time, but which one gets depleted first? Also can a player have more then one of each type up as well? I know there is some wards that only absorb certain damage types, do those stack with a normal ward or does a normal ward overwite/prevent it?

Anything else special about them?

From playing my SK with my fiancee's mystic...

SK has a small, personal ward from Aura of Leadership. He then gets a single-target ward, and a group ward (I two-box my coercer, so my fiancee uses group ward a lot). The wards deplete in this order:

Aura of Leadership Ward
Single-Target Ward
Group Ward

Wards can be active with other wards. So a ward from a druid, which affects only elemental (I believe it's a group buff enhanced by AA), will stack with a ward from a shaman. The druid one goes first, as it's from a constantly replenishing source (same as Aura of Leadership), followed by the Shaman ward.

So... wards from multiple sources are fine. A mystic and defiler who cast single-target wards on the same target... the better one will take effect (so a mystic with a master single-target ward would overwrite a defiler with expert/adept 3). I believe templars have single target wards too... these can be over-written in the same manner.

Pretty much you can have ward from AA, ward from group buff (enhanced by AA... like the druid one), single-target ward spell, group ward spell and ward from item proc.

Hopefully that'll help.

EDIT: Oh! I've also noticed that smaller wards deplete first... same as my example. Aura of Leadership is smaller than the single target ward, which is smaller than the group ward. Note, this is the BASE amount of the ward, not the amount remaining.

Another thing, if a ward spell gets cast on a target that has the same ward spell active, I don't believe they stack. It just removes the older ward amount and refreshes the spell with the new ward.

thefoof wrote:Another thing, if a ward spell gets cast on a target that has the same ward spell active, I don't believe they stack. It just removes the older ward amount and refreshes the spell with the new ward.

Yep. That's correct.

Btw I do have a defiler alt but all his gear is locked so pretty much naked. I never played him enough to really know all the mechanics (was a couple years ago anyway) since he was like my 6th or 7th toon, but I can confirm specific mechanics you don't know about if we get a list going.

Well this is going to be more complicated then I had hoped. Looks like there are 4 type of wards

Regenerative
Single target
Group
Limited (only absorbs specific damage types)

Here are some more mechanic questions.
Can the paladins self only ward be stacked with the single target ward from a mystic?
Can 2 limited wards be stacked of the same damage type? of different damage types?
Is there any situation where you can have multiple wards of the same type?
Is there any type of ward that I am missing?

Sure there will be more questions, trying to wrap my head around all possible situations so I can figure out the best way to implement them.

Most wards from different classes will stack. For example the self ward on a paladin should indeed stack with one from a mystic. But the single target mystic ward and defiler ward won't stack, same deal with HoTs for druids. The wards that don't stack are mostly within classes.

Because it's different for each spell things like this we could probably do with an lua check at the top of the cast function, I think there's too many different scenarios to totally hardcode everything. Where we could run into trouble doing this though is the check before the spellcast starts to see if there's already a more powerful effect on the target that won't stack.

Unless it's changed since SF, the paladin ward does stack with single target shaman ward.

Interestingly, it doesn't stack with the SK version of the ward (even though it's not a ward, it's a damage shield).

KhaineGB wrote:EDIT: Oh! I've also noticed that smaller wards deplete first... same as my example. Aura of Leadership is smaller than the single target ward, which is smaller than the group ward. Note, this is the BASE amount of the ward, not the amount remaining.

So does this mean that if a player has a single target ward on them, take some damage, then the Aura of Leadership is put on them the next damage will be taken from Aura and not the already damaged single target ward?

Also when you have multiple wards and the first one is down to 10 damage left and you take 20 damage the first one absorbs the 10 damage then the second ward absorbs the rest? I assume this is how it works but figure I better ask to be sure.

From what i've seen...

Say aura of leadership is up and its a 1k ward (about right at level 95)

Single target ward gets thrown on for 5k (as an example)

3k hit comes in.

Aura of Leadership absorbs the first 1k and disappears. Single target ward looses 2k (the remaining damage).

If aura pops back up while the single target is still active (its a regenerating ward), then it eats the damage before the single target one.

I'll hop on live later and borrow my fiancees mystic to test this... but pretty sure thats how it works.

Experimented while still using Ancestral Ward 7(Master) and Umbral Ward 6(Master) (yes haven't converted mythic yet) and stripping down to a few items so caps wouldn't effect this and came up with a forumla that matched the actual ward values for the gear combinations I tried.
Group Ward = ( 3884 * (1+ Potency) + Ability Mod )

Group Ward Crit = ( 3884 * ( 1+ Potency) + Ability Mod ) * (1 + ( .3 + Crit Bonus ) / 2 )
Single Target = ( 2100 * ( 1 + Potency + Prophetic Spirit ) + Ability Mod )
Single Target Crit = ( 2100 * ( 1+ Potency + Prophetic Spirit ) + Ability Mod )
* ( 1 + ( .3 + Crit Bonus + Prophetic Spriit ) /2 )
When entering percentages in forumla write as a decimal. E.G. 5% = 0.05 For example with 10% Prophetic Spirit, 12.68% Potency, Crit bonus of 21.6% and Ability mod of 200, a single target ward critical is
( 2100 * ( 1 + .1268 + .1 ) + 200 ) * ( 1 + ( .3 + .216 + .1 ) /2 )
= ( 2100 * 1.2268 ) + 200 ) * ( 1 + (.616 ) / 2 )
= ( 2576 + 200 ) * ( 1.308 )
= 2776 * ( 1.308 )
=3631 (measured value is 3633 attributed to roundoff)
Yes Wisdom still has no affect unless you have the Epic Weapon.
Was curious to note that the crit bonus provided by Prophetic spirit is included in the 50% reduction of ward crits.
I have very bad luck with getting tables to show up right on these forums, and if it doesn't show I'm not going to fight it today. But table included below.
Various combination of the following equipment where used to test:
Demitrik's Healing Hoop (just for crit chance )
Ancestral Pauldrons (12.7% potency )
Sundered Karborite Crystal +125 Ability Mod
Symbol of Najenar Dominance +75 Ability Mod
Delahnas' Chain Leggings of Wisdom 10.8 Crit Bonus
Chest of the Spectral Wight 10.8 Crit Bonus
While all the gears off anyway:
Ancestral Ward 8 (Expert) base appears to be 2111.
Umbral Warding 7 (Expert) base appears to be 3865.

Stats Ancestral 7 Umbral 6

Potency Prophetic Spirit Ability Mod Default Crit Crit bonus Base Normal Crit Base Normal
0.00% 10.00% 0 30.00% 0.00% 2100 2310 2772 3854 3854 4432
0.00% 10.00% 0 30.00% 10.80% 2100 2310 2897 3854 3854 4640
0.00% 10.00% 0 30.00% 21.60% 2100 2310 3021 3854 3854 4848
0.00% 10.00% 200 30.00% 21.60% 2100 2510 3283 3854 4054 5100
12.69% 10.00% 0 30.00% 21.60% 2100 2576 3370 3854 4343 5464
12.68% 10.00% 200 30.00% 21.60% 2100 2776 3631 3854 4543 5715
12.68% 10.00% 0 30.00% 0.00% 2100 2576 3092 3854 4343 4994

Committed code for basic ward support, could use some more testing. Added 3 new lua functions

AddWard(amount)
AddToWard(amount)
RemoveWard()

In AddWard, amount = the total amount the ward can absorb
In AddToWard amount = the amount to add to the ward, up to the total amount that can be absorbed, used for regenerative wards but haven't tested it.

Here is the test script I made to test it. Group wards should work properly but didn't have a chance to test it.

I already know of the bug where you get both the heal message and the damage message, other then that it seemed to work properly in my tests but they were very limited. If any one could do some tests and let me know how it goes I would be grateful.

Anyone, please take a moment to help test this implementation so we know what stage it's at. Jab asked for feedback, but not sure he got any.

I'll try this out too soon as I get a chance, since I am working on Spells.

Thanks

Never got feedback on this, it is an early implementation to see if my idea would work, still a lot to do to get "like live"

Any spell ID to try on Dev server ? Please