Fix broken Ion Judgement using the oldest bugfix in the book

Already fixed on test.

No, that would be the first bug, the jumps being affected by damage buffs, which I specifically mentioned so that when I said "broken Ion Judgement" people would know that wasn't what I was talking about.

Unless I misunderstand the power each jump had a chance to fail, the ability to hit a previous target is not a concern.

After the buff issue is live there will be no issue with Ion as it may hit more targets, hit the same target a few times, or stop jumping all together.

I'm just wondering if the jump time is low enough to allow it to hit a target who is already going to be dead thus wasting a jump all together.

Outside of that random is as random does sometimes Ion will hit more sometimes it will hit less.

Then you do misunderstand the power, because the jumps CANNOT fail. Ion Judgement does not work the same as other chaining powers. Every jump is autohit, then after the jump a tohit check is done about a half second later on each target hit to see if they take damage. Even if that ToHit check fails and the target doesn't get affected by the power, the target was still hit by a jump, and if it's possible it jumped to another target before the check even happened.

As for the damage, it should be self-evident, even blisteringly obvious, that enemies getting hit by multiple jumps is not as designed for the power. Each hit does exactly the same amount of damage as the other three Judgements, with a possible crit on top of that. When you have 4 powers with identical crafting costs, end costs, and recharge times, and 3 of the powers do exactly the same amount of damage on individual targets while one of them has a chance to do two or three times that, that's what we in the biz call "there's absolutely no way that's how it's meant to be."

That's one theory for why the multiple damage happens. However if it were the case, the primary target (the guy you targeted to use the power) would occasionally take double or more damage, something I've literally never seen happen. Here's my theory for why multiplied damage happens:

Here we have your average group of four enemies.


You choose one for your target (in blue) and Ion Judgement jumps to every enemy in range (the blue circle).


The first jump completed, the second jump now starts from every enemy hit by the first jump (in blue).


You may notice that the primary target (in red) and the fourth enemy are both in range of two jumps. The primary target was marked "not jump-to-able" last CPU cycle, so it isn't considered. However, the fourth enemy was not, and both jumps consider it a valid target. Since it can't be marked an invalid target until it's been jumped to, both jumps happen. At that point it's marked invalid, but both jumps have already happened and can damage the fourth target.

Jumps from Ion happen literally as soon as the server can handle it. It's necessary to do it like this so it can stay competitive with the traditional AoE Judgements despite its unique targeting method. Ion is already a slow-activating power that we really only tolerate because it has this issue and can do so much more damage than the other Judgements, so delaying the power further might not be feasible.

It's also possible that delaying secondary jumps so they happen one at a time might not be technically possible. Going back to the diagrams above, the first jump (fig. 2) happens as a PBAoE from the primary target. This means it's ONE power activation from the primary target, and each secondary target is hit with exactly the same power. Both jumps in fig. 3 are two identical copies of the same power, so there's no way for them to tell which of them should be delayed a cycle so the fourth target can be jumped to and marked invalid by the other.

It's with this theory of the workings of Ion Judgement that I suggest the change to the power's workings.

Chain Induction's jumps are slower, and the marking as "invalid for a jump" lasts only so long. It's possible for the jumps to still be happening when the mark on the first target expires and he becomes valid again. For Chain Induction this is WAI.