--Niniel EU-Kilrogg --Niniel EU-Kilrogg

Swiftmend

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.

2009-02-03

"A more powerful spell is already active" and Replenish?

(I better clarify that this is a theory of mine right now, I'd be happy to be proven wrong!)

An extremely annoying downside to the druid talent [Replenish] is that if it procs from [Rejuvenation] then that spell can't easily be refreshed on that target unless the next cast procs as well. The spell with replenish is probably considered stronger and will then not be replaced by a non-proc regular rejuv. That might be a good thing when raid healing to ensure maximum benefit from the proc but it can really mess with your cycles if you want to refresh just a few seconds early and are keeping several hots up on a few targets and don't want rejuv to drop even for a short moment. Keeping all hots up on two tanks in a fight like Patchwerk gets extremely annoying when you can't refresh rejuvenation early due to the message "A more powerful spell is already active".

Here's a picture of the effect. Regrowth, triple lifebloom and trying to cast rejuv on the MT. Assuming the fight wasn't over right there, after landing a rejuv I'd have a couple of seconds to raid heal some random targets but instead I get a non-cast and if I don't notice it then Rejuvenation drops of the MT. Either way it's a wasted effort.


If I am correct in the behavior of this talent then for it to work in a more useful way it should trigger a separate replenish buff on the target and not be interwoven with the exclusive procced rejuv. If the rejuv would be removed by a Swiftmend then I suppose the buff should be removed as well. If a new rejuv without a replenish proc were to be applied to the target then it should not reset or affect the replenish buff, just reset the rejuv timer.


If Replenish isn't the culprit then there's some Holy/Disc priest spell that conflicts with Rejuvenation or it's some random short-term spi/sp buff that procs from another class which would increase my healing though that wouldn't explain why only Rejuvenation suffers.

Update: I found a forum discussion about this subject as well as a bug report.

I quote Allyine of Azgalor in that thread saying
The bug occurs when a few different things are up:
- You have the Replenish talent and are trying to recast Rejuv while one that proc'd Replenish is on the target
- You cast a Rejuv with some sort of spell power proc up, such as a trinket, that creates a more powerful Rejuv on the target and the buff has since fallen off so you are trying to refresh a stronger spell with a weaker spell
- You cast a Rejuv in tree form, shift out and try to cast another less Rejuv in caster form


Thus to summarize it would seem that the loss of an spirit/spell power buff or a procced Replenish would cause this error. In my case it's very likely Replenish because I'm not using trinkets with spell power buffs and this happened to me last night in 10 man Naxx in a group with no shaman and everyone was alive, standing still on Patchwerk with all regular buffs up.

I'm going to respec without Replenish and test this on the next raid reset to confirm if the error goes away.

Another update:Thank you Keeva for pointing out the following:
Allyine (the OP of the thread) goes on to say:

"It's not replenish. I spec'd out of that and the problem still happens to me. "

:/


The mystery remains...

Another update: I just browsed our WWS from last night and looked specifically at our Patchwerk fight. I found another likely candidate: [Demonic Pact]. The tooltip states "increases spell power by 10% of your Spell Damage for 12 sec". I'm not sure how to interpret this. There's Bonus Damage and Bonus Healing and then there's Spell power. Does Demonic Pact take 10% of my Bonus Damage and apply it to Spell power thus raising my Bonus Healing?

Watching the numbers in WWS I could see my Rejuvenation ticking for amounts such as 1989, 1990, 2109, 2110, 2144, 2159, 2203. Assuming that I had somewhere around 2140 bonus healing that would explain the 10% increase from say 1989 to 2203 during the fight due to the Demonic Pact buff. If the warlock used spell power trinkets at the time when Demonic pact procs that would also explain the fluctuation of the numbers as 10% of his spell power would vary.

18 comments:

Kiryn said...

Oh, this was due to replenish? I was just assuming this whole time that it was due to one of my macroed trinkets making my old rejuv better than my new one, but now that I think about it, I don't actually have an on-use spellpower trinket equipped right now.

Niniel said...

It HAS to be Replenish. I started thinking what the hell it could be too. I saw that I had no other proc effects from gear that would increase spellpower so there's no doubt in my mind that Replenish is the bad guy. It only happens on Rejuvenation and that effect would be considered stronger.

Keeva said...

Have you changed macros lately? A guildy was actually having this problem with LIFEBLOOM of all things.. rejuv + trinkets are usually the culprits, but in this case it was because she had put in a new lifebloom macro and it was doing something crazy.

I don't understand how Replenish could have anything to do with it - Replenish gives you mana back, it doesn't do anything to increase or improve your Rejuv.

Niniel said...

No, I don't use a macro for Rejuvenation, it's the regular spell that is on my action bar. My theory is that Replenish is a beneficial effect (an improved rejuv) and the game assumes that you don't want to override it.

Niniel said...

@Keeva: I'm talking about the druid talent Replenish(3/3), not the hunter/paladin/priest Replenish effect btw.

Keeva said...

I know, I assumed it was the druid one - but the talent doesn't improve your Rejuv strength, it just returns power to the recipient.. so even if it is ticking some extra rage onto your tank, that doesn't make it a more powerful Rejuv.

So I have no idea why you would be getting that error.

Niniel said...

I updated with some links to the forums.

Niniel said...

I also agree with you Keeva, it shouldn't be considered a stronger rejuv but if it's a bug then it probably is.

Keeva said...

Allyine (the OP of the thread) goes on to say:

"It's not replenish. I spec'd out of that and the problem still happens to me. "

:/

Niniel said...

Ah, crap! :(

Keeva said...

Sorry :(

I saved you a little gold, at least? :/

It seems like a weird, random, stupid bug that isn't related to this, that or the other - some people are getting it constantly, others not at all (I have been lucky, thank goodness).

I hope someone identifies the problem soon, I can understand it must be incredibly frustrating when it's happening on one of our core abilities.

Anonymous said...

I always assumed that perhaps a shammeh dropped his totem rotation or my fellow tree shifted out of tree momentarily or something to affect my spell power (that was out of my control)

it being replenish makes no sense.

an odd error I wish they'd fix, however, is the "invalid target" error with wildgrowth during the vortex phase of malygoes. probably one of our best spell for flying around when you can only use instant casts practically and you can't use it >.<

Kringol said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Niniel said...

It's nice to get a discussion going! Would be good if we could figure out what it could be or at least confirm if it's a bug.

Anonymous said...

Demonic Pact increases your SP by 10% of the Warlock's SP for 12 seconds. If DP uptime is not consistent (it relies on the warlock's pet consistently critting) then you are likely to run into that error.

Averna said...

This bug really gets to me. I understand that they're trying to keep the "better version" of the spell on the target, but it messes up rotations. When I get this error message on, say, Patchwerk, which is basically the epitome of a HoT rotation fight, I *hate* it.

Niniel said...

It's quite disturbing!

I'll see if I can setup any addon such as Ghostpulse or such to notify me of gains of Demonic Pact so I easily can see if the two always coincides.

Niniel said...

I looked for it tonight in a 10 man run and can confirm that every time I had the error it coincided with Demonic Pact. I say that Demonology Warlocks are to blame for these inconsistent random spell power boosts that are disturbing our flow.