Weird DPS Bug that Inflates Damage?

Secret World Legends General Discussion Orochi Labs
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I realized this weird bug while looking at the DPS results from the daily Megaboss event Agnitio organizes. A character named Epherian (using blade+hammer) was doing significantly more damage than me with similar build so I decided to analyse his dps results more closely to see why. (Screenshot No.1)

The weirdness immediately caught my attention because he had 50x Swallow Cuts, 53x Flowing Strikes and 17x Demolish hits which would require 120 Global Cooldowns in total, but the fight lasted only 90 seconds!

When I looked further, I realized some of these hits have very low damage numbers (see the minimum hit “MinHit” column for each ability). That is really weird since these are not “glancing hits” they are normal hits. With this Item Power his Flowing Strikes (basic ability) should do around 5k dmg so it’s not possible for a Flowing Strike to do 1772 dmg (the lowest dmg Flowing Strike during the fight).

I went further into the logs for an explanation for the impossible number of abilities used (120 GCD abilities in 90 seconds) and these weird damage numbers and realized that once every 3-4 ability casts one ability hits TWICE. One time for the damage expected such as 5k and immediately after for a lower number like 2k. They are of immediate succession and both recorded as Flowing Strike or both recorded as Demolish etc. So in actuality he used 90 abilities in 90 seconds but game registered 120 ability hits. 30 of these hits are duplicate hits with lower damage. Like an echo.

I then turned my attention to another Blade user, a player named Tenetur. Similar item power, a bit lower damage. But seen the same weird hit numbers. (see picture 2)

As you can see from this log that only shows registries of Swallow Cuts a normal Swallow Cut hits for 7-8k and critical hits range between 17-20k. But there are many weird smaller hits with 1.7k, 1.8k, or 0.9k dmg.

Look at this:

0:01:09 Tenetur Swallow Cut physical The Abyssopelagic Horror 888
0:01:09 Tenetur Swallow Cut physical The Abyssopelagic Horror 20,174
0:01:08 Tenetur Swallow Cut physical The Abyssopelagic Horror 2,183
0:01:08 Tenetur Swallow Cut physical The Abyssopelagic Horror 20,006

Two casts of Swallow Cut. Both Crit for 20k. First on 01:08 and second on 01:09 and they both do extra damage for 888 and 2.1k respectively. Tenetur used 60 Swallow Cuts according to the basic report. But if we eliminate these weird numbers we can see that in actually she only used 48 Swallow Cuts and there are 12 additional instances of “fake” Swallow Cuts.

This fake damage phenomenon appears to be present for other weapons as well so it’s not just a blade thing. For example this is from Vyxenne’s log:

0:01:06 Vyxenne Burst Fire physical The Abyssopelagic Horror 1,031
0:01:06 Vyxenne Burst Fire physical The Abyssopelagic Horror 3,696
0:01:06 Vyxenne Burst Fire physical The Abyssopelagic Horror 3,433
0:01:06 Vyxenne Burst Fire physical The Abyssopelagic Horror 2,725

Notice the 4th hit from Burst Fire which is for 1031 damage. That shouldn’t be there. Now when I look at my own logs I don’t see this. (EDIT: See below in thread, I managed to create some echoes when I tried spamming hundreds of basic abilities on the training dummy)

Also, these weird damage entries don’t appear in every players’ logs. Just like me, some people’s logs don’t show any such anomalies. See 3rd picture that displays “meowmeowbeanz”'s damage numbers. Her lowest Burst Fire is 3430 and her lowest Placed Shot is 5371. Which are both normal/expected numbers. So not a single anomaly there.

The big question is: WHY is this happening? Why some players get free damage numbers? Is this damage really happening or just “appears” to be happening? Is this a game bug that is giving them free DPS? All input in solving this mystery appreciated!

Epherian DPS
Epherian DPS1164Ă—867 262 KB

Tenethur DPS
Tenethur DPS1164Ă—456 212 KB

Meowmeow DPS
Meowmeow DPS1164Ă—520 183 KB

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The gimmick of some swords are extra hits. A common offhand is techsword which does exactly that. And if you gonna do math you need to consider everything you cannot account for. same talismans, glyphs, signets, agents, museum completion% and RNG in the game.

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Weapon gimmicks (special effects) are always recorded separately in the combat logs and so are talisman effects. Museum completion damage should be added to your own damage without a separate entry.

Furthermore, in this specific case Epherian was using Shattered Hellblade and Tenetur was using Razor’s Edge - none of these swords have any additional damage that adds 1-2k as a gimmick. And his Shattered Hellblade procs are listed correctly and separately in his DPS report.

As you can see from Vyxenne’s log I have mentioned it happens with Assault Rifles, Hammers and to the best of my knowledge with every weapon kind.

This issue cannot be explained by any of the things you have mentioned.

PS: One piece of additional information I can give is that this does not happen with damage from Passives. Likewise damage from special abilities of talismans/weapons are recorded correctly. This problem seems to occur ONLY while hitting with active abilities.

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you check the settings in your ACT that its not ACT splitting 1 hit into several lines or merging them?

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Well this is definitely not ACT doing something weird, it’s the game itself.

I have spammed hundreds of Flowing Strikes on the training dummy to replicate this event and I have succeeded. This appears in the in-game combat log exactly the same -not just ACT. This is from my in-game log:

You start using Flowing Strike.
You successfully used Flowing Strike.
Your Flowing Strike hits (Normal) Anima-Sim: Nightmare for 433 physical damage.
Your Flowing Strike hits (Normal) Anima-Sim: Nightmare for 5427 physical damage.

This is from 1 Flowing Strike. As you can see there are 2x Flowing Stike entries.

If the damage is being split, the game is doing it not ACT.

BUT I don’t think it’s a split. Because my highest non-crit Flowing Strike was 5573 during this session. If we add the above entries together that would reach 5860 dmg and I never hit a 5600+ flowing strike in a single hit let alone 5873. In hundreds of tries.

Furthermore another proof that this is not a split is that the smaller amounts can crit independently of the main ability damage. Meaning: even though the actual ability does not crit, the “echo” can crit and vice-versa. For example:

Look at Tenetur’s log I shared above. Her Swallow Cuts are doing 7-8k dmg. And these “echo” hits are doing 800~ dmg each. But sometimes they do 1800 dmg. Meaning it crit.

Second example from my own log at the dummy:

0:00:46 Pantheist Flowing Strike physical Anima-Sim: Nightmare 1,454
0:00:46 Pantheist Flowing Strike physical Anima-Sim: Nightmare 5,492

My normal hit is 5492. The echo base dmg is around 450~. But when it crits it does 1.4-1.5k dmg.

Here is an example from when main dmg crits, but the echo doesn’t:

0:01:33 Pantheist Flowing Strike physical Anima-Sim: Nightmare 452
0:01:33 Pantheist Flowing Strike physical Anima-Sim: Nightmare 15,436

PS: It is also worth noting here that the “echo” damage is different for every ability and even more strangely different for every player it seems. Giving example from Epherian’s log above, the base damage of “Swallow Cut echoes” was in 1.1-1.2k range; while Tenetur’s “Swallow Cut echoes” was doing 650~ dmg. However Epherian’s normal Swallow Cuts were doing 8-9 k and Tenetur’s normal Swallow Cuts were 7-8k range. So it’s not even proportional to the main damage. Epherian was getting much more “echo” Swallow Cut damage compared to Tenetur. Likewise, Epherian’s Flowing Strike echoes were 1.7-1.9k while Tenetur’s Flowing Strike echoes was around 1k dmg. Again disproportional to their main ability damage. Because Epherian is doing only like 10% more main ability damage compared to Tenetur, but his “echo” hits did double compared to Tenetur.

SO if this is a bug it’s not a fair bug. Because it’s not even proportional to your damage. In this combat Epherian did 29k dps while Tenetur did 23k. When we look at the difference between their REAL ability damage the difference is only 10%. But this echo thing is causing a larger DPS gap between them. And remember that in that combat I got no echo damage whatsoever. So I was in even worse situation.

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well ACT can only read what your combat log says. But ACT also does data correction by default

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I would like to add that there are many effects that are not accounted for directly by ACT. For example recent testing of Pistol damage showed a respectable increase in damage from using the passive “win streak” however no damage for said passive was registered in the ACT logs. Win streak was instead logged as an additional hit under each matched chamber hit. so while it was not accounted for separately in ACT it still amounted for a large % of the damage dealt. I suspect something similar is happening with blade.

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To reiterate:

Game is doing this not ACT.
It’s not related to blade it happens with hammer, assault rifle and elementalism from my tests and most probably can happen with every weapon. The only reason I first inspected blade users is because I was comparing myself with other blade users in terms of DPS performance.

And I believe it’s simply a bug that is related to lag in the servers. BECAUSE if it were about ANY passives or ANY items, then I would see this happen in every fight because I don’t change my build/gear. But I could only make this happen when I spammed 300 basic attacks on a combat dummy.

I can also prove my point by simply removing all passive abilities and use a generic (non-extraordinary) weapon and make it happen regardless.

EDIT: I removed every passive and equipped a non-extraordinary Fist Weapon and spammed Basic Ability (Thrash) at the dummy and this happened:

You start using Thrash.
Your Thrash hits (Normal) Anima-Sim: Nightmare for 179 physical damage.
You successfully used Thrash.
Your Thrash hits (Normal) Anima-Sim: Nightmare for 1021 physical damage.
Your Thrash hits (Normal) Anima-Sim: Nightmare for 1002 physical damage.

See the 179 damage hit? It’s just not related to any weapon/ability or passive.

Another occurrence (happened after another 100 tries):

You start using Thrash.
You successfully used Thrash.
(Critical) Your Thrash hits (Normal) Anima-Sim: Nightmare for 645 physical damage.
Your Thrash hits (Normal) Anima-Sim: Nightmare for 1043 physical damage.
(Critical) Your Thrash hits (Normal) Anima-Sim: Nightmare for 3988 physical damage.

This time the echo damage crit for 645. It clearly states it’s a “critical” in the game logs even.

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If its still occurring with no passives or weapon/tali effects then the only other thing I could think of would be the museum proc damage. Which also doesn’t get registered by ACT as a separate form of damage. But its occurrence should be fairly often assuming a completed museum.

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OK GUYS mystery is solved. This is the MUSEUM damage. After extensive testing with Drenneth we realized the proc chance of this is dependent on your museum completion but still we couldn’t explain the massive discrepancy in numbers at the first glance.

Then we realized that the Museum damage is using ALL damage buffs associated with the ability that procced it. Including signets! So when you proc this damage with a Basic Blade ability and you have a max level Signet of the Pupil then your museum damage gets 111% buff too. However when you proc the museum damage with a Power Ability it only gets a 28.75% buff therefore your museum damage is lower when you proc it off of a Power Ability.

The reason some players don’t have this much while others have it more is simply because some people like me have very little museum completion. While others have higher museum completion.

This means: Museum completion is much more impactful than we initially thought of lol.

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