Abusing the range of melee cones.
By
300_below,
Posted on: 2009-06-06 15:12 in Archetypes and Powers General Discussion
Make sure you /bug it. And don't use it intentionally... the devs get annoyed at exploiting bugs.
Though this does make me wonder... if you had someone time Recall Friend exactly right, could you fire off a two mile long Golden Dragonfly? 
Cascade, level 50 Blaster (NRG/NRG since before it was cool)
Mechmeister, level 50 Bots / Traps MM
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But, I'm sure there are unbelievers, for shame, that think it might be a small oddity or the result of lag. I challenge anyone to explain what looks like extending shadow maul to 20 feet, give or take a foot. Looks like about 20.
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Woah, I've known that moving/sidestepping lets you fit more mobs into a melee cone, but the maul you caught right there is downright insane, even by my standards!
Good work. 
I've seen this on a small scale but assumed it was just triggering at an instant where they were all in the arc.
I'll have to see if I can use this more
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I've seen this on a small scale but assumed it was just triggering at an instant where they were all in the arc.
I'll have to see if I can use this more
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Same here. i have noticed a couple occasions where movement as you triggered a cone seemed to effectively increase its range and arc, but i always thought it was just an artifact of latency while player and mobs are moving. Now i'll have to actively tinker with it and see if i can reproduce this.
Dr. Todt's theme.
i make stuff...
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Now i'll have to actively tinker with it and see if i can reproduce this.
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<QR>
Haven't played much on dial-up and/or other-equally-sucky-connection (Verizon Wireless, I'm looking at ya!) have you?
Remember, way back when, when running mobs REALLY sucked to fight with melee powers? You know, how it was downright impossible to accomplish? And also how back early on, everybody wanted to street sweep? And how things in this game have always loved running? ([censored], I wonder if the guide that explained which mobs tended to run in a group is still around--"dealers" run!)
Remember any of that? Now remember when they introduced a patch that made melee attacks possible to use on moving targets? Yeah, there's your culprit. That's been around a long time. There's a reason why I have always loved Shadow Maul. Now that base attack ranges have been made so laughably massive, using this to your advantage is much, much, much, much easier.
Blue: ~Knockback Squad on Guardian~
Red: ~Undoing of Virtue on [3 guesses]~
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Remember any of that? Now remember when they introduced a patch that made melee attacks possible to use on moving targets? Yeah, there's your culprit. That's been around a long time. There's a reason why I have always loved Shadow Maul. Now that base attack ranges have been made so laughably massive, using this to your advantage is much, much, much, much easier.
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Pretty much this, I've been using this ever since the melee/runner change to the game engine. It is just more obvious and effective with the change to 7 feet.
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i have noticed a couple occasions where movement as you triggered a cone seemed to effectively increase its range and arc, but i always thought it was just an artifact of latency while player and mobs are moving.
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In effect, this likely still is the case.
Consider the game server and client having this conversation.
1) Client: I want to attack this target.
2) Server: OK it's in range, you may begin.
3) Client: I am beginning my attack.
4) Server: OK, begin animating the attack.
5) Client: I am now animating.
6) Server: OK, I am checking the area of the effect and 1) finding affected targets.
Obviously I am not sure that this is the exact form of the conversation, but if it were, imagine what the effect of latency between steps (4) and (6) could be.
Since this "expand-O cone" effect is possible, it seems likely that the game is defining cones as "from you to the target" and then finding all targets that fit in that volume. If you are in motion between steps 4 and 6, then the distance between you and that target is allowed to grow between when the game determines the attack is permitted and the final cone shape determination. The higher the latency involved, the bigger the gap between steps 4 and 6, and the more pronounced the effect will be.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
QR
I have messed with this some but I found combat jumping straight up over a group target one of the mobs can result in hitting the target cap almost like a pbaoe where I even hit targets behind me.
Onibi---Fire/Fire/fire Blaster
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wow. and here i ws going to skip shadow maul in my newest brute build.
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I challenge anyone to explain what looks like extending shadow maul to 20 feet
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Demo edit. 
Not saying you did, of course, but I've done a lot of jumping-around-lining-up-melee-cones and I've never seen anything as extreme as that. Maybe I'll try to reproduce the technique you describe.
Arc 55669 - Tales of the PPD: One Hell of a Deal (video trailer)
Arc 64511 - The Wrecking Ball
Arc 1745 - The Trouble With Trimbles
Arc 302901 - HappyCorpse
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Demo edit.
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It's not even a demo.
I have noticed that it's much easier to do this if I activate the attack while moving. Stopping, even for the shortest period of time, makes extending the range much harder. As far as I can tell, the enemy moving doesn't matter, at least not as much.
Sounds like a latency issue as much as anything else.
I also strongly beg leave to doubt that this is an "exploitable" bug or that we must all now police ourselves to avoid ever doing it by mistake or deliberately, as one poster seemed to suggest,
My scrapper doesn't need an AoE. She IS an AoE.
No, it's not a demo, it's a video. Which could be easily made from a demo. Seeing isn't necessarily believing when to comes to game play footage, which is what makes machinima possible.
Arc 55669 - Tales of the PPD: One Hell of a Deal (video trailer)
Arc 64511 - The Wrecking Ball
Arc 1745 - The Trouble With Trimbles
Arc 302901 - HappyCorpse
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No, it's not a demo, it's a video. Which could be easily made from a demo.
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His UI is showing and the UI is never shown in a demo, so it cannot be a demo.
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Same here. i have noticed a couple occasions where movement as you triggered a cone seemed to effectively increase its range and arc, but i always thought it was just an artifact of latency while player and mobs are moving.
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I've wondered if its latency itself or a result of the game's design to respond to latency. Eh, maybe thats an academic distinction but I seem to have an easy enough time to force its appearance with my normally-solid connection at home or even at my awesome connection at the university workplace. I actually have more problem forcing it to appear on larger teams where I'd expect more lag than when soloing.
Regardless of origin, have been pulling this stunt with Shadow Maul for years now and have recently discovered a large amount of insanity possible with Thousand Cuts. Seems to me to represent the flip side of what enemy factions pull on us all the time, being hit by ranged attacks through walls and such. Is it abusing the game engine, even an exploit? I dunno,maybe, but since the devs seem to be in no rush to fix either side of the equation (or is potentially unfixable) its hard to consider it an outright exploit when the mobs are performing their own version of the behavior on us.
Umber's Hall of Heroes & Villains
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No, it's not a demo, it's a video. Which could be easily made from a demo. Seeing isn't necessarily believing when to comes to game play footage, which is what makes machinima possible.
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There's no UI in a demo playback.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
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I've wondered if its latency itself or a result of the game's design to respond to latency. Eh, maybe thats an academic distinction but I seem to have an easy enough time to force its appearance with my normally-solid connection at home or even at my awesome connection at the university workplace. I actually have more problem forcing it to appear on larger teams where I'd expect more lag than when soloing.
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What we call "lag" is often a superset of high network latency. The "lag" on a large team is more often a result of stress on the client or even the server than of large delays in delivery (or processing of) of network traffic.
Blue
American Steele: 50 BS/Inv
Nightfall: 50 DDD
Sable Slayer: 50 DM/Rgn
Fortune's Shadow: 50 Dark/Psi
WinterStrike: 47 Ice/Dev
Quantum Well: 43 Inv/EM
Twilit Destiny: 43 MA/DA
Red
Shadowslip: 50 DDC
Final Rest: 50 MA/Rgn
Abyssal Frost: 50 Ice/Dark
Golden Ember: 50 SM/FA
I think that they should keep it, it takes more skill than it seems and it would only work with the first attack if you are attacking constantly (movement suppression). Great post.
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I think that they should keep it, it takes more skill than it seems and it would only work with the first attack if you are attacking constantly (movement suppression). Great post.
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It's not something they can necessarily keep/remove, it's a quirk of the engine, their patchwork fix, and latency. If they removed the patch (if it were possible), it might reinstate the horrors of melee attacks+moving targets...even Knockout Blow with its abnormal range was a pain to use...and I'd probably have to reach through the Internet and slap the OP with his keyboard for it.
That said...I'm rather surprised more than anything at these longtime players from the melee AT boards that have never seen this.
Blue: ~Knockback Squad on Guardian~
Red: ~Undoing of Virtue on [3 guesses]~
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That said...I'm rather surprised more than anything at these longtime players from the melee AT boards that have never seen this.
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I find it rather amusing that I avoided sets that coincidentally use melee cones, mostly due to activation times (claws, axe, katana, broadsword, etc) that have recently been changed. My regen scrapper avoided getting large groups in melee range, and my stone/axe tank isn't very light on his feet. I'm rather dissapointed I didn't realize this a long long time ago.
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Yeah, I noticed this too. And it never crossed my mind that it might possibly be an exploit, oops. X_x
My first experience with it was doing a little street sweeping in Sharkhead. You know those looong lines of arachnos troops trotting around the place? Well, I hit my "target nearest" a liiiittle bit early, while I was still Combat Hurdling past the group, activated Jacob's Ladder and went "wooooah. I LIKE hitting all of them in a single tiny cone."
It's gotten SO MUCH EASIER since melee was extended to 7 feet from 5. And Combat Jumping + Hurdle, well, I thought I swore by it BEFORE- now it's even MORE betterer for tactical melee positioning.
Same. I noticed this too, but I didn't realised it could be an exploit.
Are we not supposed to use it now, or it's "free game if it's there"? 
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I know that most melee cones now have a range of seven feet, and I've always done some small sidestepping with them to try to get as many targets hit as possible.
Lately, however, I've noticed that when I'm moving around a bit, I have been hitting groups of enemies that shouldn't be hit at once by a seven foot cone. Specifically, when I move away from a target, the cone acts like the range includes where I am when I click the attack, as well as where I was a moment before. For example, here I managed to hit two targets with shadowmaul, even though when I'm stationary they are too far apart to active the power. Moving appears to mess with the range.
But, I'm sure there are unbelievers, for shame, that think it might be a small oddity or the result of lag. I challenge anyone to explain what looks like extending shadow maul to 20 feet, give or take a foot. Looks like about 20.
Once I notied this odd behavior, I tried applying it to other melee cones, like golden dragonfly, which is all but impossible to use to hit more than two enemies at once. Or is it?
Perhaps I need to respec back into breath of fire for a bit...