Guild Wars 2

Edit: This is not really a doom bug nor a chilblains bug. In fact, it’s not even a necromancer bug. Check this post for my latest findings on this bug.

Original OP:
Today, in the new tournament map, I realized I’m unable to cast room right after I fear someone with staff #5. I thought I’m having a bad luck and my doom is failing but I kept seeing nothing when I cast doom. No immune, block, invulnerable, miss, nothing.
So I went back to the HotM and tried it on the golems and to my dismay, if the target has fear on him already, your doom won’t do anything.
Has anybody else observed this? Such a change was not mentioned in the change log but it greatly affects terror builds.

It works for me, also tested on a golem in the HotM.

I’ve tested it multiple times on the golems. My staff #5 fears, then I immediately go to DS, cast doom on the target, absolutely nothing happens, that said, the duration of the fear doesn’t get stacked.
There’s something amiss here.

Edit: I just realized the problem is not with the stacking but with the fact that when I cast doom immediately after going to death shroud, the skill does nothing and goes into cooldown!

Here’s a screenshot of the bug I’m having.
I have Path of Midnight (SR III) so my doom is 17 seconds recharge.
I stand right next to a golem. Go to death shroud and cast doom right after I enter death shroud. My skill triggers and starts the cooldown but the skill doesn’t do anything on the target. As you see in the screenshot, the skill has just entered cooldown but the target has no fear on him or anything.

Doom does some direct damage. Look in the combat log, if doom isn’t hitting at then something odd is going on. Well, if it is hitting, but no fear, something is going on as well.

Good idea with the combat log.
And here’s a screenshot with combat log. As you see, there’s nothing in the combat log for Doom.

I tried Doom→Mark and Mark→Doom, I also tried to recreate your bug with and without Path of Midnight.
My fears stacked everytime and Doom never failed.

I don’t know. It sucks if it’s just me. My screenshots clearly show the bug. As I corrected myself, the problem is not the stacking. If I wait some time after I enter DS and then cast doom, it successfully triggers. It’s that if I cast doom immediately after I enter death shroud, this bug occurs. I never had this problem before the very most recent update (yesterday or a day before).

I really tried to make it as fast as possible, I almost pressed f1+3 at the same time, but it still worked for me.

Burjis.3087:

. It’s that if I cast doom immediately after I enter death shroud, this bug occurs.

Hmph… May it be because your ping to game server is suffering from something?

I’ve got some similar behaviour with another skills, which needs some preconditions to cast, when I was too far from wi-fi spot & got lags bcz of that.

My ping is sub-optimal, I admit, but this has never been an issue before.
Also with the case of bad ping, the skill should either not trigger at all or trigger late, not go into cooldown with no effect!
To cope with command lag, everytime I want to doom someone, I press the DS button and start pressing 3 multiple times until it triggers. Before the most recent update, it worked. After the most recent update, the skill goes into cooldown with no effect.
Bottom line is, it is clear now that it has something to do with ping although this is a new problem.

Might be a connection issue, so Doom is on cooldown locally for you, while the server thinks, you didn’t cast it yet.

I’d say, file a bug report with your system spec, a screenshot with combat log and a short description. Maybe they can figure out what’s going on.

There is a known bug that if you enter DS and you cast Doom immediately the skill will just go on cooldown without causing any effects(either damage or fear).
It has been like this since the start, you basically have to wait just a little bit before using your Doom , really annoying bug.

The weird thing is, I never had this problem until one or two days ago.

I seriously can’t get this to reproduce.

Any other advice or details? I’m using path of midnight and hitting Doom right after using death shroud, and I can’t make it go on cooldown without causing an effect on the target.

Edit: Naphack has the right idea, I think. Unless people can start reproducing this on their end, a bug report from your machine is about all that we can do.

40-70 ping depending on time/how kitten y my net provider is/how tardy a maps net code is (like the new BoFW is not only really bad optimized for shadows but breaks net connection like every 40~ minutes, but for some weird reason skyhammer, who came in the same patch is great). Never had a problem with it, but i got used to necro timings (reason why i suck as s/d ele) and bug avoidance, so not to overlap/swap before mark drops, use a life blast post ds before other skills, etc.
Right now there is quite the problem with staff skills (Regen from MOD not applying correcty/priority on minions than players, Putrid only being a 3-5 transfer; i think if you got immob it counts it as 3 condis and marks that get canceled but finish the arm swing/poker card handout move go on full cd).

The doom thing has been a reported bug for a long time, but it doesn’t occur to everyone. I know for sure that it works for me (I very often go into DS use Doom, and get out fast enough that it doesn’t trigger regen), but I also know the bug happens to others.

Started happening to me in the last couple of days too.

I also get same bug as well. If you use stakitten mark then go into deatshroud and quickly press 3 skill, cd procs but not the fear. This has been happening to me since last month.

I managed to find more detail on how and when this happens.

When you press F1 (or whatever key you bound DS to), if you have a very good ping, you’ll see the DS bar immediately. If you don’t have a very good ping, there might be a split-second delay until you see the DS bar. In this very short interval, while you still see your main bar (after pressing F1), if you press 3, your skill on the main hand (for example chillblains) starts flashing, but when the bar eventually changes to DS, it’s actually doom that goes into recharge and nothing happens. Remember, this all happens in less than a second.
If I wait until I see doom on my screen and then press 3, this bug won’t trigger.
I have also tested that if your skill #3 on your weapon is on cooldown, this bug doesn’t happen either and your doom successfully triggers.

/skip this part if you want as it’s not that important/
It’s also good to point out that this bug doesn’t happen to other DS skills (probably because of doom being the only instant skill in that bar).
Also, for just a bit more detail, I tested a similar situation with staff #2 of mesmer (an instant skill). I stay on sword for example, press swap weapon to swap to staff and start pressing 2 while my bar still shows the sword skills. Sword #2 starts flashing but when my weapon swap finally happens, staff #2 successfully triggers, so I can say this bug only happens with DS and Doom.

Bug is pretty simple.
F1
3
The moment you ENTER DS use your Doom. The target won’t be feared but the skill will be on cooldown. The doom has to be almost instant with the time press F1

natsos.3692:

Bug is pretty simple.
F1
3
The moment you ENTER DS use your Doom. The target won’t be feared but the skill will be on cooldown. The doom has to be almost instant with the time press F1

Just want to point out that there seems to be a system factor to this bug: as in what system you’re playing on seems to determine whether or not it is reproducible. Personally I can hit F1 & 3 (For my key bindings, Ctrl + R) simultaneously and still have Doom hit correctly every time.

It could be that some of the protection code that keeps this from happening with weapon swaps isn’t in place for DS.

Is it possible for anyone experiencing this to cause a false recharge on any of the other DS skills?

Softspoken.2410:

Is it possible for anyone experiencing this to cause a false recharge on any of the other DS skills?

No, this only happens to doom. I explained when exactly it happens on my last post. The bug only occurs to me if I press 3 before my DS bar appears. I’m assuming this will not occur on low ping nets as the moment they press F1, their skill bar changes immediately but with my ping, when I press “enter death shroud”, there’s a very short delay before the DS bar appears, during which I have time to press 3 and cause the bug.
As I said, if your #3 skill on your weapon is in cooldown, this bug doesn’t happen.

This apparently only happens when I’m on staff. Testing this further, this doesn’t occur to me when I’m on scepter, dagger or axe.

Burjis.3087:

This apparently only happens when I’m on staff. Testing this further, this doesn’t occur to me when I’m on scepter, dagger or axe.

I wonder if it’s related to the way that staff marks go on full cooldown if interrupted while casting?

Edit: I think I found it. Staff + Fast-cast ground targeting and I can reproduce it every time. I highly encourage anyone interested to switch their fast-cast setting and see if it changes when the bug occurs.

Edit2: This is almost certainly caused by the way that staff inappropriately puts skills on recharge when interrupted. It’s just bizarre that it’s transferring the ‘go on recharge’ part to Doom, but it may be some glitch involving Doom’s instant cast nature.

Good observation Softspoken. Thanks for taking your time trying to figure out this bug.

I think I eventually fully figured this out (or have I?):
This is long and somewhat technical but I think it fully details the problem.

I am now perfectly sure that this bug is not directly related to doom at all, nor chilblains for that matter. In fact, this bug can occur on every class.
It’s all about the targeting system. When you’re casting a ground targeted skill, the system doesn’t take your selected target into account, well of course, because it’s a ground targeted skill.
What this bug involves is that while swapping weapons or changing skill bars (such as death shroud), there is a very short delay before you actually see your next bar during which you can make the skills on your first bar to activate if you press the related button fast enough (your client still thinks that you have the first bar). If the activated skill is a ground targeted skill, what the client does is to register the ground as your target not the selected enemy and the client sends this info to the server. When your next bar eventually appears, the server casts the skill bound to the same button on this new bar (because the server has already received the weapon swap/enter death shroud command) so the game activates that skill instead. However the server uses the info sent to it by the client which is the targeting info of the skill on the previous bar. That said, the server doesn’t have an enemy target, but it has the ground as its target. If the skill on the new bar is an enemy targeted skill, the skill is actually cast but it fails just as when you cast that skill with no enemy targeted (and no autotargeting enabled) at all.

Example 1 (the topic of this thread): As a necromancer, you have staff, switch to death shroud and press 3 before your DS bar appears (you need to have your cursor somewhere chilblains can reach, and chilblains shouldn’t be in cooldown and if not using ground-targetting, you should actually double tab the skill. In short, you should fool the client into thinking that you’re casting chilblains). When your DS bar appears you cast doom, but the server doesn’t know of your target (as if there’s no target selected). Doom fails.

Example 2: Staff as one set, axe as the other. You swap weapon (from staff to axe) and press 2 before the axe skills appear. Ghastly Claws triggers but it has no target so it fails.

Example 3: On a guardian (yes this happens to all classes), stay within 600 range of your target but not too close. You have scepter. You swap to sword and press 2 (activate smite on your client) but when your sword bar appears you cast Flashing Blade, but you don’t teleport to your target because the game hasn’t registered your target. If you are too close to your target, the aoe blind of the skill triggers (that part doesn’t need a target) but you don’t teleport (that part needs a target).

I included a screenshot with combat log for the Flashing Blade example.
Remember, this bug occurs to skills that will fail, fully or partially if you don’t have a target. Projectile skills, AoE skills and the likes aren’t affected.

Hm. I’m surprised to hear it’s cross-profession, but you’re probably correct in your analysis.