Improperly scaled AOE damage (do large amounts to players)
Posted: June 30th, 2008, 5:28 am
Buddy and me were running around and discovered this exploit using a PoM. He was using smite.
Exploit:
Use a spell with AOE component on lower level mob with higher level player in range of the AOE effect. You will deal more than normal damage to the player.
ie. Lev 40 Mob, Lev 50 Char
(There might be other AOE component attacks that do this)
Mechanic being abused:
Scaling of damage based on "char level" and based on "player vs npc"
Theory:
The damage is normally scaled based on char level and whether the target is a player or npc. I believe it scales the amount of the AOE damage off of the characteristics of the target mob. If you hit a lower level mob then you have a larger amount of splash damage to deal to the player.
I'm not entirely sure where the error in damage resolution occurs but it could be in one of two places:
"When it hits the player"--Calculates a lower resistance to normal amounts of damage through the 'level' and 'npc or player' scaling factors (ie. it treats all targets of splash damage as the level of the mob and as an npc).
"When it hits the npc"--Calculates higher amount of damage to be dealt through AOE based off of the npc. (generates extra splash damage in total compared to splash damage that would be generated from a higher level player character)
Story:
PoM was power leveling a DT and the DT was attacking a level 40 mob. PoM smited the mob and the splash damage killed the DT with 29xx damage). Normally a level 60 non-crit smite cannot one shot a level 40 character.
Exploit:
Use a spell with AOE component on lower level mob with higher level player in range of the AOE effect. You will deal more than normal damage to the player.
ie. Lev 40 Mob, Lev 50 Char
(There might be other AOE component attacks that do this)
Mechanic being abused:
Scaling of damage based on "char level" and based on "player vs npc"
Theory:
The damage is normally scaled based on char level and whether the target is a player or npc. I believe it scales the amount of the AOE damage off of the characteristics of the target mob. If you hit a lower level mob then you have a larger amount of splash damage to deal to the player.
I'm not entirely sure where the error in damage resolution occurs but it could be in one of two places:
"When it hits the player"--Calculates a lower resistance to normal amounts of damage through the 'level' and 'npc or player' scaling factors (ie. it treats all targets of splash damage as the level of the mob and as an npc).
"When it hits the npc"--Calculates higher amount of damage to be dealt through AOE based off of the npc. (generates extra splash damage in total compared to splash damage that would be generated from a higher level player character)
Story:
PoM was power leveling a DT and the DT was attacking a level 40 mob. PoM smited the mob and the splash damage killed the DT with 29xx damage). Normally a level 60 non-crit smite cannot one shot a level 40 character.