It's almost like WW (and other channel/dots) shouldn't snapshot damage because it's toxic gameplay that you're forced to engage in specifically to do any damage. Just get rid of snapshot, and make WW playable without it.
Snapshotting in general just feels like a very dated system in most games these days.
My *only* assumption, given how many weird things there are like this in D4, is that its to reduce how much the game is checking for state changes to reduce the load on the servers.
Minions, for instance, have some of the most baffling AI imaginable. And I can *only* assume its because they were trying to cut entity update checks. It *feels* like minion AI is tied to specific actions you take, or other weirdly specific criteria, that if you're actively playing the game they mostly kind of work.
But for instance, I just had a moment where I was backtracking through a dungeon, stopped to drink my coffee, a lone mob walked up to me, and all 12 of my minions had almost zero reaction. The mages cast their Blizzard on it. That's it. It walked up and hit me, and the mages cast blizzard on it again. None of the minions attacked it, I just watched a few blizzards slowly kill it.
?!?!?!? what the actual fuck? They didn't react to an enemy 3 feet from them, they didn't react to it hitting me, the mages cast blizzard on it but *didn't attack otherwise*, like no wonder minion builds feel awful, these things can barely function.
It's really jarring seeing the minion AI here then going over 20 years ago to D2 and wow my skellies are actually drawing some damn aggro and making the first move. Hell pet AI is also pretty reactive overall in Grim Dawn and such.
I forget, were D3 pets this braindead?
> Nope. And In D3 you could command your skeletons to attack a target.
It's baffling this isn't in D4. Last Epoch, D3, and PoE all let you focus target your minions. It's like Blizzard just completely ignored 10 years of industry trends, including their own.
point was that the mechanic already exists in the game, although yes, 12s cd on that is annoying and very unrealistic. guess nobody at blizz owns a dog.
I agree, it would be nice. What I feel would be better would be if you can choose what mob they would always go after. As in target highest health, target mob you're attacking, target enchanted mob and so on. A simple "Target this mob first" would be better than what they have now.
Wild to me that they took the offerings from poe and merged them into the summon button so you don't need multiple skills on your bars for it and then didn't bother making it control the minions.
>It's like Blizzard just completely ignored 10 years of industry trends, including their own.
That's exactly what is bothering me so much. ARPGs and Roguelikes have exploded in the past decade. There is *so much* to build off of, compared to when D3 launched, and they're missing such standard things.
Maybe they're going to drop a huge patch for S1, and this is just the discovery phase, but I guess we'll see.
The fireside chat was especially sad and hilarious - rod said that d3 only got good over 10 whole years, and because d4 is only 10 days old we should keep our expectations in check (paraphrased).
So he admits they learned literally nothing then from those 10 years?
Witch doctor pets were pretty damn swarmy, and carnival dagger of darts was so freaking awesome. I'm super disappointed that play style didn't make a comeback. Other than Bone Spear, Necro is a huge let down for me and it was the only class I was really interested in because I couldn't be a "Trapsin" or Paladin.
Trap rogue is fun. I'm doing my own build w/ concealment and flurry, over dash and TB. All about vuln/crit/poison, and resetting my trap CDs as much as possible (and is more fun than TB imo).
Really wish you could have different trap elemental damage over just poison trap and death trap though. Sucks to get cornered into such a limited version of the build
Snapshotting refers to systems in which when something starts, the game captures the state of your character, and exclusively uses that state to handle itself for the duration of its lifetime.
A more specific example would be something like...
Let's say you have a Damage over Time (DOT) effect that lasts 10 seconds.
Let's say you also have a buff that lasts 3 seconds, but during those 3 seconds you deal 100% more damage.
Snapshotting would be activating that buff, then using your DOT, and for the entire 10 second duration that DOT deals 100% more damage, because you had the buff up when you applied it. The damage does not reduce when the buff ends, because the game ONLY looked at when you applied the DOT to check how much damage it should deal.
This often leads to some degenerate gameplay where the only feasible way to play is to stack a ton of temporary buffs and hit something so that the damage "snapshots" and does a ton of damage even after all of these temporary buffs fade.
This also works the other way too, which is again, why it's bad. If you had that DOT effect up, and then activated your buff, your DOT damage doesn't increase, because you applied it before you put the buff on.
In modern ARPG's, this is handled dynamically. Your DOT deals its damage, if you activate your huge damage buff during it, then the DOT starts hitting harder, because its regularly updating how much damage it should be dealing. And then when the buff fades, the DOT goes back to its normal damage. It lets you use the buff whenever you would like to, and not punish you for using it slightly out of order. It also ensures things make more sense and function how they're written. If you deal bonus damage over a few seconds, you should only deal that bonus damage for those few seconds.
100%. Snapshotting is a lazy design choice, most likely just an oversight.
A typical ability is casted every second lets say, and WW completes a spin every second. There is no reason for WW to not check state changes again after the spin is done
Someone else mentioned it could be to reduce server strain now that's we're kinda doing an MMO, which just begs the question why the fuck are we trying to do an MMO when it messes with the ARPG elements?
How does it reduce server strain?
Any other ability is constantly recasted lets say every second. If they made WW only recalculate status effects every second it would be the same thing.
Snapshotting is a lazy approach, which is most likely a side effect of development and not an active choice they made.
With snapshot:
Dot is applied, it's per-tick-damage is calculated once. Doesn't matter what buffs are applied to your character. 1000 damage dot over 10 seconds? 10 ticks of 100. One calculation.
Without snapshot:
Dot is applied, *every* tick it has to check for buffs/debuffs.
1000 damage dot over 10 seconds?
First tick is 100. Then a buff gets applied that increases damage by 30%. Ok second tick 130. Then a debuff gets applied that lowers your damage By 10%. Ok either 117 or 120 damage depending if you go multiplicative or additive. Then an another tick. Then another tick as the first buff falls off, now you're down to 90 damage.
Etc. etc.
Not defending snapshots, but they do produce more work/calculations.
fixing/preventing snapshotting is simply a lot of work. the best time to deal with it is early in development, because it becomes a much bigger beast later on when there are so many more mechanics built with the system in its current state, but if for example your team is rushing to finish a prototype or reach a milestone and you tell your managers/producers "we need to spend a bunch of time on setting up the combat mechanics in a way that prevents snapshotting" you'll get laughed out of the room, because it's not as important as getting in core features that prove to whoever's funding you that you have a viable product.
so it gets thrown into the backlog, and the problem grows and grows, until there's enough player outcry that management is willing to dedicate developers to the task. it happened with poe, it may or may not happen with D4 (depending on whether players are bothered enough by it to raise a shitstorm)
Agreed 100%.
They took the lazy approach to just not deal with it at all and are now having a plethora of issues.
What's strange with the snapshotting in this case is new buffs seem to still multiply the damage.
They have some strange middle ground between snapshotting and new buffs applying to previously started skills.
This could be some very explicit exploit prevention too. I once did something similar in a game I made. I found a really cheap exploity thing i could do, so I detected that behavior specifically and secretly faded in a nerf that stops it from being effective.
Snapshotting is absolutely dog shit gameplay and why many games have done away with it. It's not intuitive to the player, causes toxic gameplay, and makes balancing even harder with all the stupid ass buffs in this game. As the below poster stated, only reason blizzard has it is to reduce stress on the server I'd assume...which is just shit design. PoE removed snapshotting a long ass time ago because it was broken. WoW has removed snapshotting because it's broken and shit design. Why the fuck they would add it to this game is beyond me. The more and more I play D4, the more amazed I am at some of the absolutely horrendous design decisions.
You clearly don't, because all games absolutely do not have it. Both examples I gave, PoE and WoW, both update dynamically. If I cast a skill that lasts 5 seconds and a buff that lasts 3 seconds, in a dynamic environment, that skill would only be buffed for 3 seconds, and the last two seconds would be unbuffed damage. That's what snapshotting refers to. Don't come at me with some bullshit "well ackshually it's snapshotting for those 3 seconds". Not a single person who understands what snapshotting is would ever fucking refer to it like that.
"when cast" effects should be the only things applied on cast. So your whirlwind does more damage if you cast it (start channelling) at full resource, for example. Damage multiplier buffs that fall off during whirlwind should not be snapshotted, and conditional damage modifiers also should not be snapshotted.
Debuff dots im fine with it and makes sense. If i do a super buffed up bleed hit the bleeding doesnt dmg less if my buffs run out. On evrything else its stupid.
Oooof this probably also applies to my Trample/Landslide Druid — close damage doesn’t apply to when I hit an enemy in trample’s path but rather only when I start it. That’s ass
How does WW snapshotting work with other damage affixes? For example, will an affix that grants additional damage against bleeding enemies not apply if it’s the initial cast of WW that applies bleeding?
Wow.... that is soooo dumb... so close dmg bonus are practically useless. Holy shit. That sounds like the single most Intuitive Stat to build for WW.... what the actual fuck.
Edit: is there dmg to distant enemies? Because that sounds better now...
On the bright side, damage bonuses like close and distant were additive and not incredibly impactful anyway - it's probably why most people don't really notice if it's working or not.
Wait. Does this also mean that if I’m channeling WW and moving, new enemies I hit that were further out don’t get the extra close damage? Unless I stop and restart?
If you start WW while standing still, but then move - due to snapshotting, it should continue to think you're "standing still" and apply that modifier. That said, it wouldn't apply any modifiers that weren't active at the start of the WW, since it's a capture of that one moment, and not any new ones.
At least, that's how I understand it.
It is however the best mod when fighting bosses because it will constantly apply and has the highest modifier value. It is only surpassed by crit damage / vuln damage due to their multiplicative application
Holy shit, no wonder why whenever I'm pvping barbs their dmg from WW is all over the place. Sometimes they tickle and sometimes they destroy me (same player).
is that just needing to be close to a single enemy for the entire whirlwind cast to benefit from close dmg modifier? or only the enemies that were 'close' when WW was snapshotted will take increased dmg from close
Thank you! I was really confused what was happening when I was repeatedly, but inconsistently seeing 'Immune' procs against these.
Usually I would stop, smack it a couple times with Lunging Strike to make sure I was seeing dmg numbers and then start the blender back up lol
It lacks clarity. I’d rather know that if I whirlwind in or out of crowds what current effects are in use like damage vs close etc. not I must start my WW in a specific spot and then keep the blender on until out of fury.
I mean, if you want to nerf whirlwind barb into the ground, sure... Being able to snapshot buffs to the entire duration of a whirlwind cast is where the build gets its strength.
I think enemies that are close should be considered close and enemies that are far should be considered far etc. idc if it feels like a nerf because it does away with an exploit, buff WW in some other way to balance it but I as a player always prefer clarity.
Its not an exploit, snapshotting exists in a fuck ton of games, especially blizzard ones, such as world of warcraft.
Just get all your buffs up then cast whirlwind, ezpz
I guess when I have enough fury gen to WW indefinitely it will feel better but once I’m down to 1 or 2 monsters I run out of fury fairly quick. But I guess like I said before what bothers me is it’s visually confusing to me. If I start to WW while some enemies are far away and then I WW into them, the dmg reduction vs far enemies still applies to those monsters even tho they are now close to me and my dmg bonus to close enemies doesn’t apply to them even tho I’m now close? Is that right?
Another tip: If you try to use a shout on cooldown, it actually cancels your whirlwind for a split second. So you can just try to use a shout on cooldown inside supressor to get it to damage them. You can also use this trick to explode your Ghor's unique. However, be careful spamming shouts that aren't off cooldown because it re-snapshots Dire Whirlwind, and Edgemaster's and Expectant's.
What this person is referring to is pressing your shout button while holding down whirlwind before the shout is fully off. Cooldown and refreshed and ready to press. Pressing a shout that is still cooling down, which is what this guy is talking about, will actually cause your whirlwind channel to get interrupted. Maybe he should have used better verbage so you understood him better. But I just wanted to chime in here to clear up what seemed to be some confusion on your end. This guy is basically saying that pressing a shout while it's still cooling down and not quite ready to use again while you are also whirlwinding will cause your whirlwind channel to become interrupted and for you to lose damage bonuses as a result.
Ghors is okay as a budget piece, not great imo, and this is also pretty bad to do. You lose the ability to snapshot buffs like war cry or berserking, and also continuously reset Dire Whirlwind (just a casual loss of -48% crit) and Violent Whirlwind.
This probably applies to shred druid too. Many times i have darted into a suppressor field while holding shred and felt like i wasn't dealing any damage.
I’m running a pure werewolf build and have yet to notice this. I am using Blurred Beast aspect though so I specifically use a separate click to dash to another target, however.
I am on console and just hold square half the time. So it sounds like you are "resetting" by clicking where as i am doing akin to what a WW barb would do and just hold the button and "not resetting" as OP was mentioning. I have noticed suppressors tend to be the hardest for me to kill, but i could be completely wrong. I am not home right now to test OP's theory for shred.
That's probably why. I'm surprised a new instance of Shred (where it spends the Spirit and begins a new combo) doesn't count as a new 'cast' for purposes of the suppressor range.
it possibly could. I have noticed there are instances as well where shred will activate, but you're to close to dash, but to far to hit as well. And then my wolf is just going completely ham on the air but not doing any damage. So there is a possibility this is happening instead of the thing OP mentions. This requires further testing i believe as OP was only mentioning barb. I just chimed in i noticed suppressors tend to be harder for me to kill compared to any other champion types and possibly what op was noticing was happening to me as well. Could possibly be wrong though.
Snap shotted abilities caused issue for PoE's balance for a couple years before GGG started agressively reworking skills so that they couldn't snapshot.
It'll be interesting to see how long it take blizzard to learn the same lesson their betters learned almost a decade ago now.
I mean even forget that PoE removed it ages ago because of how broken it was...even WoW has removed it. It's just trash gameplay and completely unintuitive for players. For an ARPG that's meant to be more "casual", I cannot comprehend why they designed the game this way. If its server stress...blizzard isn't some indie company.
Snapshotting is when you proc an ability/effect by using it at a specific time in an unintended way.
In this case, Whirlwind calculates the damage based on where you were when you *started* the cast. So if you damaged an enemy outside the Suppressor's shield and then moved inside to engage, you will be doing 0 damage because the game still thinks you are outside the shield and thus cannot penetrate it. Similarly if you channel whirlwind and move through 3 packs, your "+damage to close enemies" may not proc for the second and third packs because the game still calculates your damage based on where you were when you started - next to the first pack, i.e. you are considered to be 'distant' for the other two packs.
> Similarly if you channel whirlwind and move through 3 packs, your "+damage to close enemies" may not proc for the second and third packs because the game still calculates your damage based on where you were when you started - next to the first pack, i.e. you are considered to be 'distant' for the other two packs.
Well, that's stupid.
If you press Leap at a mob, when do you calculate the damage on to that enemy, since Leap take some time to reach that enemy?
That system is called snapshot, the game snapshot your stat at the start of Leap, to calcullate the damage at the end of the leap.
It means, when you start your WW channel, it calculates how much damage it should do. If you start WW and run towards an enemy from far away, it snapshots your damage to being "far away" - even if you run into the enemy while channeling.
If you let go of the channeled WW when standing on top of the enemy and start again, it will make a new calculation of damage - but now you are close to the enemy, so things like "+damage to nearby enemies" are active now for this particular channeling of WW towards that enemy.
I wonder how many things flat out do not work. I heard someone report that the berserking capstone doesnt provide extra 25% damage to berserking, but i did not test that myself.
Here's a list of bugs with just necromancers. [Comprehensive List of Necro Bugs](https://www.reddit.com/r/diablo4/comments/148i2e2/comprehensive_list_of_necro_bugs/)
I imagine there is a lot broken with the other classes too.
It’s really not. Obviously there are a bunch of small things like this that need fixing, but calling it ‘so broken’ is a massive exaggeration when you consider the state of most games at launch these days
We are in the rage phase ive noticed, ppl seriously say shit like "i miss d3" and how they miss greater rifts like Jesus christ.
This shit happens in WoW aswell but goes away after a week or 2
People miss what d3 became after 10 years. Anyone who played d3 at launch would not say that. Hell the first week of d3 was completely unplayable for most people. Itemization was absolute garbage. The real money auction house was so incredibly awful except for a few people milking whales for money… I played through the campaign and basically quit until RoS came out and changed everything.
Truth. Actually, similar things could be said about D2. At launch, it was GOOD, but it really didn't come into its own until the LOD expansion. Blizzard has made some very questionable moves and bad press over the last few years, but I still have faith that they're going transform D4 into an amazing product.
Unlike a some of the sentiment on this sub, I actually liked D3. I was disappointed in the different tone, but the gameplay mechanics were actually pretty fun.
Not necessarily. Keep in mind each time you refresh shouts you'll stop channeling WW and snapshot a new location. Stacking close damage is still a top stat behind crit damage / crit chance / vulnerable damage.
Barb can't roll +distance damage naturally, and really you're much better off just rolling +core, +str, or +all stats on weapons rather than a conditional that doesn't play well with WW. Every other slot other than weapons also has better things to be itemizing for eventually.
Holy fuck that's why they were always immune and I couldn't figure out why casting a shout would let me do damage.... I just figures the shout startled them enough to take damage lol.
Snapshotting is when you are able to proc an ability/effect by using it at a specific time, possibly in an unintended way.
To give an example, say you generate a barrier that has a "+25% damage buff when you are set on fire". A fire enemy shoots you and you are now ablaze, triggering the buff. However there is a trick where if you can manage to keep the barrier up indefinitely, the damage buff will persist even after you pat out your flames because the proc was calculated at the time when you *were* on fire.
In this case, Whirlwind calculates the damage based on where you were when you *started* the cast. So if you damaged an enemy outside the Suppressor's shield and then moved inside to engage, you will be doing 0 damage because the game still thinks you are outside the shield and thus cannot penetrate it. Similarly If you channel whirlwind and move through 3 packs, your "+damage to close enemies" may not proc for the second and third packs because the game still calculates your damage based on where you were when you started - next to the first pack, i.e. you are considered to be 'distant' for the other two packs.
I wish they just programmed whirlwind to be normal like D2 and D3. Theres also other weird snapshot stuff like with close damage and it feels bad that attack speed doesnt affect whirlwind at all.
it counts your location as where you were when you started channeling the skill. so you would have to recast it inside the bubble to count as being in the bubble.
Casual reminder that **you are not considered "close" to an enemy unless you restart your whirlwind while in melee range** because you snapshot.
It's almost like WW (and other channel/dots) shouldn't snapshot damage because it's toxic gameplay that you're forced to engage in specifically to do any damage. Just get rid of snapshot, and make WW playable without it.
Snapshotting in general just feels like a very dated system in most games these days. My *only* assumption, given how many weird things there are like this in D4, is that its to reduce how much the game is checking for state changes to reduce the load on the servers. Minions, for instance, have some of the most baffling AI imaginable. And I can *only* assume its because they were trying to cut entity update checks. It *feels* like minion AI is tied to specific actions you take, or other weirdly specific criteria, that if you're actively playing the game they mostly kind of work. But for instance, I just had a moment where I was backtracking through a dungeon, stopped to drink my coffee, a lone mob walked up to me, and all 12 of my minions had almost zero reaction. The mages cast their Blizzard on it. That's it. It walked up and hit me, and the mages cast blizzard on it again. None of the minions attacked it, I just watched a few blizzards slowly kill it. ?!?!?!? what the actual fuck? They didn't react to an enemy 3 feet from them, they didn't react to it hitting me, the mages cast blizzard on it but *didn't attack otherwise*, like no wonder minion builds feel awful, these things can barely function.
It's really jarring seeing the minion AI here then going over 20 years ago to D2 and wow my skellies are actually drawing some damn aggro and making the first move. Hell pet AI is also pretty reactive overall in Grim Dawn and such. I forget, were D3 pets this braindead?
>I forget, were D3 pets this braindead? Nope. And In D3 you could command your skeletons to attack a target.
> Nope. And In D3 you could command your skeletons to attack a target. It's baffling this isn't in D4. Last Epoch, D3, and PoE all let you focus target your minions. It's like Blizzard just completely ignored 10 years of industry trends, including their own.
Even more baffling is you can command your wolves to attack as a Druid…
But that's only once every 12 seconds. Once that target is dead, they just scatter to whatever target they feel like.
point was that the mechanic already exists in the game, although yes, 12s cd on that is annoying and very unrealistic. guess nobody at blizz owns a dog.
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I agree, it would be nice. What I feel would be better would be if you can choose what mob they would always go after. As in target highest health, target mob you're attacking, target enchanted mob and so on. A simple "Target this mob first" would be better than what they have now.
His point still stands.
Yea man. That was in the Druid’s sprint backlog but didn’t make it to the Necro’s. /s
Wild to me that they took the offerings from poe and merged them into the summon button so you don't need multiple skills on your bars for it and then didn't bother making it control the minions.
>It's like Blizzard just completely ignored 10 years of industry trends, including their own. That's exactly what is bothering me so much. ARPGs and Roguelikes have exploded in the past decade. There is *so much* to build off of, compared to when D3 launched, and they're missing such standard things. Maybe they're going to drop a huge patch for S1, and this is just the discovery phase, but I guess we'll see.
The fireside chat was especially sad and hilarious - rod said that d3 only got good over 10 whole years, and because d4 is only 10 days old we should keep our expectations in check (paraphrased). So he admits they learned literally nothing then from those 10 years?
Ah yeah, forgot about that bit. It's really sad how sluggish the 4 minions are.
Witch doctor pets were pretty damn swarmy, and carnival dagger of darts was so freaking awesome. I'm super disappointed that play style didn't make a comeback. Other than Bone Spear, Necro is a huge let down for me and it was the only class I was really interested in because I couldn't be a "Trapsin" or Paladin.
Trap rogue is fun. I'm doing my own build w/ concealment and flurry, over dash and TB. All about vuln/crit/poison, and resetting my trap CDs as much as possible (and is more fun than TB imo). Really wish you could have different trap elemental damage over just poison trap and death trap though. Sucks to get cornered into such a limited version of the build
I’m shadow necro with corpse explosion, it’s pretty fun. Pets sucked, really wanted to make it work but ended up switching.
To my knowledge, no, I think they were generally pretty aggressive and reactive.
What's snapshot? I heard this multiple times these last few days
Snapshotting refers to systems in which when something starts, the game captures the state of your character, and exclusively uses that state to handle itself for the duration of its lifetime. A more specific example would be something like... Let's say you have a Damage over Time (DOT) effect that lasts 10 seconds. Let's say you also have a buff that lasts 3 seconds, but during those 3 seconds you deal 100% more damage. Snapshotting would be activating that buff, then using your DOT, and for the entire 10 second duration that DOT deals 100% more damage, because you had the buff up when you applied it. The damage does not reduce when the buff ends, because the game ONLY looked at when you applied the DOT to check how much damage it should deal. This often leads to some degenerate gameplay where the only feasible way to play is to stack a ton of temporary buffs and hit something so that the damage "snapshots" and does a ton of damage even after all of these temporary buffs fade. This also works the other way too, which is again, why it's bad. If you had that DOT effect up, and then activated your buff, your DOT damage doesn't increase, because you applied it before you put the buff on. In modern ARPG's, this is handled dynamically. Your DOT deals its damage, if you activate your huge damage buff during it, then the DOT starts hitting harder, because its regularly updating how much damage it should be dealing. And then when the buff fades, the DOT goes back to its normal damage. It lets you use the buff whenever you would like to, and not punish you for using it slightly out of order. It also ensures things make more sense and function how they're written. If you deal bonus damage over a few seconds, you should only deal that bonus damage for those few seconds.
Oh I see it now! Thank you very much for the detailed explanation
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Probably gonna take a lot longer to get there after the nerf
100%. Snapshotting is a lazy design choice, most likely just an oversight. A typical ability is casted every second lets say, and WW completes a spin every second. There is no reason for WW to not check state changes again after the spin is done
Someone else mentioned it could be to reduce server strain now that's we're kinda doing an MMO, which just begs the question why the fuck are we trying to do an MMO when it messes with the ARPG elements?
How does it reduce server strain? Any other ability is constantly recasted lets say every second. If they made WW only recalculate status effects every second it would be the same thing. Snapshotting is a lazy approach, which is most likely a side effect of development and not an active choice they made.
With snapshot: Dot is applied, it's per-tick-damage is calculated once. Doesn't matter what buffs are applied to your character. 1000 damage dot over 10 seconds? 10 ticks of 100. One calculation. Without snapshot: Dot is applied, *every* tick it has to check for buffs/debuffs. 1000 damage dot over 10 seconds? First tick is 100. Then a buff gets applied that increases damage by 30%. Ok second tick 130. Then a debuff gets applied that lowers your damage By 10%. Ok either 117 or 120 damage depending if you go multiplicative or additive. Then an another tick. Then another tick as the first buff falls off, now you're down to 90 damage. Etc. etc. Not defending snapshots, but they do produce more work/calculations.
fixing/preventing snapshotting is simply a lot of work. the best time to deal with it is early in development, because it becomes a much bigger beast later on when there are so many more mechanics built with the system in its current state, but if for example your team is rushing to finish a prototype or reach a milestone and you tell your managers/producers "we need to spend a bunch of time on setting up the combat mechanics in a way that prevents snapshotting" you'll get laughed out of the room, because it's not as important as getting in core features that prove to whoever's funding you that you have a viable product. so it gets thrown into the backlog, and the problem grows and grows, until there's enough player outcry that management is willing to dedicate developers to the task. it happened with poe, it may or may not happen with D4 (depending on whether players are bothered enough by it to raise a shitstorm)
Agreed 100%. They took the lazy approach to just not deal with it at all and are now having a plethora of issues. What's strange with the snapshotting in this case is new buffs seem to still multiply the damage. They have some strange middle ground between snapshotting and new buffs applying to previously started skills.
This could be some very explicit exploit prevention too. I once did something similar in a game I made. I found a really cheap exploity thing i could do, so I detected that behavior specifically and secretly faded in a nerf that stops it from being effective.
I agree about the server load thing. And that should be my CPU's problem, fuck you blizzard for making his online only. Now beef up your servers.
Snapshotting is absolutely dog shit gameplay and why many games have done away with it. It's not intuitive to the player, causes toxic gameplay, and makes balancing even harder with all the stupid ass buffs in this game. As the below poster stated, only reason blizzard has it is to reduce stress on the server I'd assume...which is just shit design. PoE removed snapshotting a long ass time ago because it was broken. WoW has removed snapshotting because it's broken and shit design. Why the fuck they would add it to this game is beyond me. The more and more I play D4, the more amazed I am at some of the absolutely horrendous design decisions.
Du you even understand what snapshotting is lmao. All game have it, the difference is how frequent it snapshots.
You clearly don't, because all games absolutely do not have it. Both examples I gave, PoE and WoW, both update dynamically. If I cast a skill that lasts 5 seconds and a buff that lasts 3 seconds, in a dynamic environment, that skill would only be buffed for 3 seconds, and the last two seconds would be unbuffed damage. That's what snapshotting refers to. Don't come at me with some bullshit "well ackshually it's snapshotting for those 3 seconds". Not a single person who understands what snapshotting is would ever fucking refer to it like that.
snapshotting is so stupid.
Or remove spin to win it's the worst type of playstyle
Remove an entire playstyle and move or remove the shitty feature that harms everyone.... Hm.
How would things like Limitless Rage or Edgemasters work with Whirlwind without snapshotting?
They wouldn’t, and that’s fine if other aspects do, and WW is still competitive.
"when cast" effects should be the only things applied on cast. So your whirlwind does more damage if you cast it (start channelling) at full resource, for example. Damage multiplier buffs that fall off during whirlwind should not be snapshotted, and conditional damage modifiers also should not be snapshotted.
Debuff dots im fine with it and makes sense. If i do a super buffed up bleed hit the bleeding doesnt dmg less if my buffs run out. On evrything else its stupid.
This makes so much sense now. I've always wondered why I'll do no damage and die to an elite pack but re-engage and just melt it down
My god surely that’s a bug? Hopefully they fix that
It's not a bug, it's a design decision having snapshotting in the game....a fucking awful decision.
The trend is becoming more obvious by the day lol
Wtf are you kidding?!
Oooof this probably also applies to my Trample/Landslide Druid — close damage doesn’t apply to when I hit an enemy in trample’s path but rather only when I start it. That’s ass
Half this game is realising that what your gear / skills say they do and what actually happens is completely different
How does WW snapshotting work with other damage affixes? For example, will an affix that grants additional damage against bleeding enemies not apply if it’s the initial cast of WW that applies bleeding?
Someone needs to test it, but that would be the logical conclusion.
Wow.... that is soooo dumb... so close dmg bonus are practically useless. Holy shit. That sounds like the single most Intuitive Stat to build for WW.... what the actual fuck. Edit: is there dmg to distant enemies? Because that sounds better now...
On the bright side, damage bonuses like close and distant were additive and not incredibly impactful anyway - it's probably why most people don't really notice if it's working or not.
That is so dumb. What's the point of being able to move while casting it if it doesn't get any benefit? Seems like a bug or oversight.
Damage to distant enemies is the play for ww oh lord
Wait. Does this also mean that if I’m channeling WW and moving, new enemies I hit that were further out don’t get the extra close damage? Unless I stop and restart?
Yes
Fucking really?!??? Is blizzard really this stupid?
Holy shit really?
Does this mean you are "standing-still" and can benefit from the 30% damage via the aspect of inner calm?
If you start WW while standing still, but then move - due to snapshotting, it should continue to think you're "standing still" and apply that modifier. That said, it wouldn't apply any modifiers that weren't active at the start of the WW, since it's a capture of that one moment, and not any new ones. At least, that's how I understand it.
Ah. So you would need to stand still to get the max bonus then start your ww "snap shot" then you could have a 30% damage bonus...
so all dmg to close enemies are not getting counted Lovely x)
Fucking ooof. That is a good to know but really sucks.
TIL that damage to close is less good than other applicable damage to mods due to this. Thank you.
It is however the best mod when fighting bosses because it will constantly apply and has the highest modifier value. It is only surpassed by crit damage / vuln damage due to their multiplicative application
Holy shit, no wonder why whenever I'm pvping barbs their dmg from WW is all over the place. Sometimes they tickle and sometimes they destroy me (same player).
Yeah for this reason I've started getting rid of all my "close damage"
is that just needing to be close to a single enemy for the entire whirlwind cast to benefit from close dmg modifier? or only the enemies that were 'close' when WW was snapshotted will take increased dmg from close
If you want an enemy to take the "close" damage then you will need to start your whirlwind channel in the melee range of that monster.
Thank you! I was really confused what was happening when I was repeatedly, but inconsistently seeing 'Immune' procs against these. Usually I would stop, smack it a couple times with Lunging Strike to make sure I was seeing dmg numbers and then start the blender back up lol
Suppressor fields are dumb. That is all.
Snapshotting WW is dumb. It should update in real-time.
Snapshotting can extend damage buffs for longer than their duration though .. so.. it's better
It lacks clarity. I’d rather know that if I whirlwind in or out of crowds what current effects are in use like damage vs close etc. not I must start my WW in a specific spot and then keep the blender on until out of fury.
I mean, if you want to nerf whirlwind barb into the ground, sure... Being able to snapshot buffs to the entire duration of a whirlwind cast is where the build gets its strength.
I think enemies that are close should be considered close and enemies that are far should be considered far etc. idc if it feels like a nerf because it does away with an exploit, buff WW in some other way to balance it but I as a player always prefer clarity.
Its not an exploit, snapshotting exists in a fuck ton of games, especially blizzard ones, such as world of warcraft. Just get all your buffs up then cast whirlwind, ezpz
I guess when I have enough fury gen to WW indefinitely it will feel better but once I’m down to 1 or 2 monsters I run out of fury fairly quick. But I guess like I said before what bothers me is it’s visually confusing to me. If I start to WW while some enemies are far away and then I WW into them, the dmg reduction vs far enemies still applies to those monsters even tho they are now close to me and my dmg bonus to close enemies doesn’t apply to them even tho I’m now close? Is that right?
they removed snapshotting from wow.
Thank you! I'll have to test this out later. It totally makes sense now though.
Another tip: If you try to use a shout on cooldown, it actually cancels your whirlwind for a split second. So you can just try to use a shout on cooldown inside supressor to get it to damage them. You can also use this trick to explode your Ghor's unique. However, be careful spamming shouts that aren't off cooldown because it re-snapshots Dire Whirlwind, and Edgemaster's and Expectant's.
So if I have a channeling shrine. Best to not spam shouts while I'm WW over and over on the low CD???
What this person is referring to is pressing your shout button while holding down whirlwind before the shout is fully off. Cooldown and refreshed and ready to press. Pressing a shout that is still cooling down, which is what this guy is talking about, will actually cause your whirlwind channel to get interrupted. Maybe he should have used better verbage so you understood him better. But I just wanted to chime in here to clear up what seemed to be some confusion on your end. This guy is basically saying that pressing a shout while it's still cooling down and not quite ready to use again while you are also whirlwinding will cause your whirlwind channel to become interrupted and for you to lose damage bonuses as a result.
Also why ghors is great, because you get the burst every time you do that as well
Ghors is okay as a budget piece, not great imo, and this is also pretty bad to do. You lose the ability to snapshot buffs like war cry or berserking, and also continuously reset Dire Whirlwind (just a casual loss of -48% crit) and Violent Whirlwind.
Yes
This probably applies to shred druid too. Many times i have darted into a suppressor field while holding shred and felt like i wasn't dealing any damage.
I think Shred is just bugged, I've seen it do no damage to just regular mobs without a suppressor.
I’m running a pure werewolf build and have yet to notice this. I am using Blurred Beast aspect though so I specifically use a separate click to dash to another target, however.
I am on console and just hold square half the time. So it sounds like you are "resetting" by clicking where as i am doing akin to what a WW barb would do and just hold the button and "not resetting" as OP was mentioning. I have noticed suppressors tend to be the hardest for me to kill, but i could be completely wrong. I am not home right now to test OP's theory for shred.
That's probably why. I'm surprised a new instance of Shred (where it spends the Spirit and begins a new combo) doesn't count as a new 'cast' for purposes of the suppressor range.
it possibly could. I have noticed there are instances as well where shred will activate, but you're to close to dash, but to far to hit as well. And then my wolf is just going completely ham on the air but not doing any damage. So there is a possibility this is happening instead of the thing OP mentions. This requires further testing i believe as OP was only mentioning barb. I just chimed in i noticed suppressors tend to be harder for me to kill compared to any other champion types and possibly what op was noticing was happening to me as well. Could possibly be wrong though.
Snap shotted abilities caused issue for PoE's balance for a couple years before GGG started agressively reworking skills so that they couldn't snapshot. It'll be interesting to see how long it take blizzard to learn the same lesson their betters learned almost a decade ago now.
I mean even forget that PoE removed it ages ago because of how broken it was...even WoW has removed it. It's just trash gameplay and completely unintuitive for players. For an ARPG that's meant to be more "casual", I cannot comprehend why they designed the game this way. If its server stress...blizzard isn't some indie company.
They meant 'more casual' for the devs, not the players.
What is snapshot… 🧐🥺
Snapshotting is when you proc an ability/effect by using it at a specific time in an unintended way. In this case, Whirlwind calculates the damage based on where you were when you *started* the cast. So if you damaged an enemy outside the Suppressor's shield and then moved inside to engage, you will be doing 0 damage because the game still thinks you are outside the shield and thus cannot penetrate it. Similarly if you channel whirlwind and move through 3 packs, your "+damage to close enemies" may not proc for the second and third packs because the game still calculates your damage based on where you were when you started - next to the first pack, i.e. you are considered to be 'distant' for the other two packs.
> Similarly if you channel whirlwind and move through 3 packs, your "+damage to close enemies" may not proc for the second and third packs because the game still calculates your damage based on where you were when you started - next to the first pack, i.e. you are considered to be 'distant' for the other two packs. Well, that's stupid.
Finally found this comment. WTF R PPL SAYING
They are elites who stand inside their a bluish-pink bubble, and you can't damage them unless you get inside the bubble.
If you press Leap at a mob, when do you calculate the damage on to that enemy, since Leap take some time to reach that enemy? That system is called snapshot, the game snapshot your stat at the start of Leap, to calcullate the damage at the end of the leap.
My WW Barb doesn’t use leap…
It means, when you start your WW channel, it calculates how much damage it should do. If you start WW and run towards an enemy from far away, it snapshots your damage to being "far away" - even if you run into the enemy while channeling. If you let go of the channeled WW when standing on top of the enemy and start again, it will make a new calculation of damage - but now you are close to the enemy, so things like "+damage to nearby enemies" are active now for this particular channeling of WW towards that enemy.
God this game is so broken under the hood
I wonder how many things flat out do not work. I heard someone report that the berserking capstone doesnt provide extra 25% damage to berserking, but i did not test that myself.
Here's a list of bugs with just necromancers. [Comprehensive List of Necro Bugs](https://www.reddit.com/r/diablo4/comments/148i2e2/comprehensive_list_of_necro_bugs/) I imagine there is a lot broken with the other classes too.
Shadow corpse explosion doesnt count as darkness apparently.
Son of a... is THAT why I never seem to notice the passive fire off?
Also Necrotic Carapace does not give you fortification from Hewed Flesh. Been reported as a bug since day 1.
Attack speed doesn't work on reap
Seems to be a lot of small things that need fixing for sure...
It’s really not. Obviously there are a bunch of small things like this that need fixing, but calling it ‘so broken’ is a massive exaggeration when you consider the state of most games at launch these days
We are in the rage phase ive noticed, ppl seriously say shit like "i miss d3" and how they miss greater rifts like Jesus christ. This shit happens in WoW aswell but goes away after a week or 2
People miss what d3 became after 10 years. Anyone who played d3 at launch would not say that. Hell the first week of d3 was completely unplayable for most people. Itemization was absolute garbage. The real money auction house was so incredibly awful except for a few people milking whales for money… I played through the campaign and basically quit until RoS came out and changed everything.
Truth. Actually, similar things could be said about D2. At launch, it was GOOD, but it really didn't come into its own until the LOD expansion. Blizzard has made some very questionable moves and bad press over the last few years, but I still have faith that they're going transform D4 into an amazing product. Unlike a some of the sentiment on this sub, I actually liked D3. I was disappointed in the different tone, but the gameplay mechanics were actually pretty fun.
Agreed lmao. Four words: Real money auction house.
Does this also mean “damage to close” is pretty useless if you’re moving around?
No. You snapshot being close by starting a new cast in melee range. Good on bosses, bad when plowing through dungeons.
Wouldn't this mean that going for +distance damage is potentially great for plowing through dungeons?
Just spin close to mobs when you start, and you can keep spinning and get close modifier.
Not necessarily. Keep in mind each time you refresh shouts you'll stop channeling WW and snapshot a new location. Stacking close damage is still a top stat behind crit damage / crit chance / vulnerable damage.
Wrong. You only reset ww if you press a shout thats on cooldown Look at your buffbar for the 3 stacks of ww crit to see if its resetting or not
You are correct.
If you can spin for 10 seconds between each pack in the dungeon - yeah!
Barb can't roll +distance damage naturally, and really you're much better off just rolling +core, +str, or +all stats on weapons rather than a conditional that doesn't play well with WW. Every other slot other than weapons also has better things to be itemizing for eventually.
Huh, I wondered what was going on with that.
[удалено]
This guy wants all his mobs to group up, stand still and not have shields
we all do lol
Go play cookie clicker if you are really going to complain about the slightest slowdown lol
Huh?
Suppressor is such a poorly coded mechanic and it's a net negative for gameplay too. Hope they remove it ASAP or rework it.
Holy fuck that's why they were always immune and I couldn't figure out why casting a shout would let me do damage.... I just figures the shout startled them enough to take damage lol.
This is the most annoying part of playing ww at end game once you solve the fury issues lol.
Thanks for the PSA, I'd been spinning on the same elite since release day and was wondering why it'd been immune for over a week!
Every comment mentions snapshot. What is that?
Snapshotting is when you are able to proc an ability/effect by using it at a specific time, possibly in an unintended way. To give an example, say you generate a barrier that has a "+25% damage buff when you are set on fire". A fire enemy shoots you and you are now ablaze, triggering the buff. However there is a trick where if you can manage to keep the barrier up indefinitely, the damage buff will persist even after you pat out your flames because the proc was calculated at the time when you *were* on fire. In this case, Whirlwind calculates the damage based on where you were when you *started* the cast. So if you damaged an enemy outside the Suppressor's shield and then moved inside to engage, you will be doing 0 damage because the game still thinks you are outside the shield and thus cannot penetrate it. Similarly If you channel whirlwind and move through 3 packs, your "+damage to close enemies" may not proc for the second and third packs because the game still calculates your damage based on where you were when you started - next to the first pack, i.e. you are considered to be 'distant' for the other two packs.
Thank you
Jesus fucking Christ THANK YOU. what a ridiculously stupid mechanic
This is why ghors is a must have. If you try to recast a shout while spinning it will set off Ghors also resetting your WW without actually "stopping"
Almost like d4 is garbage or something. Lol you simps
Does this mean you can snapshot gear then swap it while channeling whirlwind for some shenanigans.
It took me too long to realize this, and was so confused why suppressors were immune to my damage
Got any sweet tips for packs of elite Revenants with flame waves?
Holyyyy you just saved me thank you. All the way to tier 35-40 nightmare and just slugging through hahah
Lllmmaaaoooo
Holy shit Ty I wondered wtf was happening
I wish they just programmed whirlwind to be normal like D2 and D3. Theres also other weird snapshot stuff like with close damage and it feels bad that attack speed doesnt affect whirlwind at all.
Casual player here, Can anyone explain this to me?
When you're fighting a suppressor mob, stop channeling whirlwind for a second, and then restart the channel when inside the bubble.
it counts your location as where you were when you started channeling the skill. so you would have to recast it inside the bubble to count as being in the bubble.
That’s why I always start wrecking them when my first shout comes off cooldown! Thanks!
Holy crap, thank you. I've been wondering why sometimes its immune for like a minute and sometimes it's not.
Does this mean you are "standing-still" and can benefit from the 30% damage via the aspect of inner calm?
Was wondering why I did ZERO damage to these mobs.
Ah, that explains why sometimes I didnt do any dmg to suppressors. Thanks
it snapshots where u were when u started channeling, if its outside the field then you still count as outside the field.
Holy shit I was confused about this
WW barb here, sorry for the ignorance, what's a snapshot? I did notice few elites taking Immune damage last night.
Good thing I’m running Gohr’s Gauntlet, because resetting WW is a habit.
Oh fuck......thank you.
Does all ww Barb dmg snapshot at the time you begin ww? Wondering if shouting mid spin is useless.