Righteous Defense "broken"?

Confirmed tonight we're back to the target-of-target behavior (i.e. must be cast on a group member).

Well crap. I thought I had one miss tonight. I guess it's this crap happening. Great.

I'm positive I used it on a mob yesterday, worked fine.

I know how these things derail quickly into a "I didn't experience it so everyone else must be wrong thing". My post is going to sound like that but I don't actually feel this way.

Here are my observations however:
1. There are a lot of adds that change targets constantly to use abilities on random people. This will jack with RD.
2. Abilities like mind control recently changed, the MC'd mob upon release likes to stick to the mind controller for a bit. I noticed this change and asked the SP about it and he said he noticed it too. Anyone know if there's any fact to that?
3. I do catch "Misses" from RD on occasion and they show in the combat log.

In general, RD has always been *best* used by selecting a player due to the nature of the skill. The mob could change targets at any time and server/client lag can cause unexpected results.

Here is a combat log parse showing a couple misses:

Code: Select all

[19:09:57.179] Paperplate casts Righteous Defense on Sarina
[19:09:57.282]  Azureborne Destroyer afflicted by Righteous Defense from Paperplate
[19:10:00.237] Paperplate's Righteous Defense fades from  Azureborne Destroyer
[19:10:25.436] Paperplate casts Righteous Defense on Dethstalker
[19:10:41.589] Paperplate casts Righteous Defense on Heliaster
[19:10:41.732]  Azureborne Destroyer afflicted by Righteous Defense from Paperplate
[19:10:44.694] Paperplate's Righteous Defense fades from  Azureborne Destroyer
[19:11:12.301] Paperplate Righteous Defense  Azureborne Destroyer Miss *********
[19:11:12.301] Paperplate casts Righteous Defense on Vraiya
[19:14:15.310] Paperplate casts Righteous Defense on Fynnia
[19:14:15.335]  Wind Breaker afflicted by Righteous Defense from Paperplate
[19:14:18.344] Paperplate's Righteous Defense fades from  Wind Breaker
[20:01:51.559] Paperplate casts Righteous Defense on Vemo
[20:01:51.931]  Twilight-shifter afflicted by Righteous Defense from Paperplate
[20:01:54.891] Paperplate's Righteous Defense fades from  Twilight-shifter
[20:02:02.277] Paperplate casts Righteous Defense on Dethstalker
[20:02:22.419] Paperplate casts Righteous Defense on Kyleneari
[20:02:22.682]  Twilight Portal Shaper afflicted by Righteous Defense from Paperplate
[20:02:25.676] Paperplate's Righteous Defense fades from  Twilight Portal Shaper
[20:02:43.013] Paperplate casts Righteous Defense on Grubstealer
[20:02:43.157]  Twilight-shifter afflicted by Righteous Defense from Paperplate
[20:02:46.130] Paperplate's Righteous Defense fades from  Twilight-shifter
[20:04:22.854] Paperplate casts Righteous Defense on Kyleneari
[20:04:23.052]  Twilight Portal Shaper afflicted by Righteous Defense from Paperplate
[20:04:23.052]  Twilight Portal Shaper afflicted by Righteous Defense from Paperplate
[20:04:26.024] Paperplate's Righteous Defense fades from  Twilight Portal Shaper
[20:04:26.024] Paperplate's Righteous Defense fades from  Twilight Portal Shaper
[20:04:35.818] Paperplate casts Righteous Defense on Candes
[20:04:35.858]  Twilight-shifter afflicted by Righteous Defense from Paperplate
[20:04:38.873] Paperplate's Righteous Defense fades from  Twilight-shifter
[20:04:46.403] Paperplate Righteous Defense  Twilight-shifter Miss ********
[20:04:46.403] Paperplate casts Righteous Defense on Silveria
[20:05:45.210] Paperplate casts Righteous Defense on Ebaytoon
[20:05:45.262]  Twilight Portal Shaper afflicted by Righteous Defense from Paperplate
[20:05:48.287] Paperplate's Righteous Defense fades from  Twilight Portal Shaper
[20:06:15.955] Paperplate casts Righteous Defense on Candes
[20:06:16.264]  Twilight Portal Shaper afflicted by Righteous Defense from Paperplate
[20:06:19.262] Paperplate's Righteous Defense fades from  Twilight Portal Shaper


I do not use any macros. I either taunt from grid + clique or I taunt using RD directly on the mob. I do either interchangeably so I couldn't tell you what I did with the scenarios above.

I've been trying to figure out where the misses are coming from since I first encountered one a week or so ago. So far, I only have a few hypotheses:

1. When taunts were changed to automatically succeed, HoR was changed but RD was not. This would mean RD is still on the spell hit table, which means up to a 9% chance to miss after talents on a level 88. However, the base miss chance against an 87 is only 6%, which is reduced to 0% by Touched by the Light. The Twilight-shifter in your parse is 87, so RD should not miss against it under normal circumstances, even if it were on the spell hit table. That suggests something else is going on.
   
2. Maybe RD shows up as a miss when the mob is immune? HoR does show up as "immune" in those cases though. It would be odd, but it could just be a combat log reporting error.
   
3. The mob or the player has a buff/debuff that increases chance to miss or invalidates taunts. This sounds like a possibility, and both the Azureborne Destroyer and Twilight-shifter have abilities that fool with aggro.

We should be able to test this:

• Get two paladins (can be any combination, though tank/healer or tank/tank is probably safest) and wear gear that has 0 hit rating (if Holy, make sure not to take Enlightened Judgements).
• Find a level 88/skull mob that melees weakly enough that you're not in danger. Let the healer pull healing aggro, and then both paladins alternate RD on the mob until it goes immune.
• Wait for the immunity to wear off and repeat.

At 9% spell miss chance, there's a 0.9% chance of landing 50 RD's without a miss. 0.008% in 100 RD's.
At 17% (a healer's miss chance), it's 0.009% for 50, and 0.0000008% for 100.
For a tank/healer combination, 50 (25 each) would be 0.09% and 100 (50 each) would be 0.00008%.

If we can't do this on an 88, it's still possible on an 87 if both paladins spec Holy. That's only 6% miss though, so 100 taunts to push the likelihood down 0.2%. 150 would push it down to 0.009% though.

inthedrops wrote:2. Abilities like mind control recently changed, the MC'd mob upon release likes to stick to the mind controller for a bit. I noticed this change and asked the SP about it and he said he noticed it too. Anyone know if there's any fact to that?

Could this be an issue with Fade?

Hey all
this is my 1st post I'm not sure if this issue has been sorted, tried searching but this was the most recent post i could find.
I was tanking Al'akir tonight and had RD miss twice when used on a party member (a druid and a paly healer) using healbot to target the raid member and trying to taunt the stormlings. I've got logs but don't know how to just link the correct lines of combat txt, here's a world of logs link if someone else can make any sense of it http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/lwnk ... enc=bosses

[21:52:53.414] Daishan casts Righteous Defense on Glowbot
[21:52:53.666] Stormling afflicted by Righteous Defense from Daishan
[21:52:56.654] Daishan's Righteous Defense fades from Stormling
[21:53:10.696] Daishan casts Righteous Defense on Glowbot
[21:53:55.042] Daishan casts Righteous Defense on Borgrimm
[21:53:55.116] Al'Akir afflicted by Righteous Defense from Daishan
[21:53:58.101] Daishan's Righteous Defense fades from Al'Akir
[21:54:05.839] Daishan Righteous Defense Stormling Miss
[21:54:05.839] Daishan casts Righteous Defense on Leighton
[21:54:05.927] Stormling afflicted by Righteous Defense from Daishan
[21:54:08.949] Daishan's Righteous Defense fades from Stormling
[21:54:23.344] Daishan casts Righteous Defense on Glowbot
[21:54:23.572] Stormling afflicted by Righteous Defense from Daishan
[21:54:26.644] Daishan's Righteous Defense fades from Stormling
[21:54:43.626] Daishan casts Righteous Defense on Raira
[21:54:44.025] Stormling afflicted by Righteous Defense from Daishan
[21:54:47.057] Daishan's Righteous Defense fades from Stormling
[21:54:57.828] Daishan Righteous Defense Stormling Miss

So it's clear RD can miss. It's now just a matter of performing the tests I outlined above to determine what the chance is, and thus what mechanics it's using.

Thx for the quick response,
Would the test still be valid if I used a lvl 80 pally and a lvl 83 mob, or maybe even a 84/85 mob to increase miss chance?

Yup, it should work just fine. Just make note of your level, your partner's level, and the mob's level.

Note that lvl 84 Cata mobs might beat the crap out of level 80 testers though.

Can also use older-world bosses (that are marked as Skull)

Molten Core, for instance.

I don't have formal test results but from Heroic Chimaeron attempts this week:

127 RD casts
9 misses

7.08% miss

my gear has 1.93% melee hit and 10.26% spell hit according to askmrrobot - not in game to check there atm - 232 hit rating.

http://www.worldoflogs.com/reports/rt-r ... ell/31790/

Closest number would suggest RD's on spell hit although the sample size is too small to be conclusive.

Forgot to add, this was by casting RD on the boss, no macro used.

Browsing that log, it looks like all of the misses were outside of Caustic Slime periods. So if your spell hit really is at 10.26%, this strongly suggests that RD is still dependent on spell hit mechanics.

Hiroko - are you a draenei, by any chance? I don't remember if they still
get a +hit bonus, or whether it appeared on the character sheet.

Nah, human.