Tier 5 Demon (Glabrezu) missing weapon

[Imperatrix]

I'm not sure if this is a bug or an unannounced rebalance, but the Glabrezu summon used to be equipped with a spear which it seems to have lost in the process of attaining its new model (which is very nice, by the way.)

It's now using its creature weapon which is a lot less effective. It's quite the downgrade.

[MalKalz]

We will look into this.

Thanks.

[Aren]

Bump. This seems to still be an issue.

[Aren]

Yes, this is definitely still an issue.

The Glabrezu is effectively worse than the Vrock in terms of damage. It's missing 3-4 ab (as I am not sure if the wiki factors in the AB from GSF), and has gone from 16-20 crit range to a flat 20 (I suspect from its missing spear).

Glabrezu unbuffed with GSF currently ingame:


How it is supposed to look:

[Hunter548]

The Summoned Glabrezu that blackguards summon at level 9 appears to be bugged. Its feats, as well as its stats reported here indicate it should be using a spear. Having played a blackguard in the past, I can confirm that at least as of 18ish months ago, this was the case.

However, since the addition of hack models last year, the Glabrezu has not been correctly armed, leading to its stats looking like this. Notably, it appears to be completely unarmed or armed only with a creature weapon.


In addition to this meaning the glabrezu isn't as strong as it should be, it also means that the Glabrezu is significantly weaker than both the Vrock that precedes it for blackguards/abyssal warlocks, and both the equivalent yugoloth and devil.

[Imperatrix]

Bump. Still missing its spear.

[Xerah]

I looked at it and it wouldn't let me add a spear so that might be why it disappeared. I don't really have haks installed for this, so that could be why and it's also possible I'd mess it up further if I changed this.

It does seem to have all creature weapon bonuses (imp crit, ews, etc.) but those don't look like they're showing up on the screen. Maybe someone added those in. I'm not sure.

[Batrachophrenoboocosmomachia]

The Glabrezu is decked out with creature weapons and the requisite proficiencies, whereas the spear feats are a legacy from when the creature used to be statted out differently. The old feats will simply be removed to avoid future confusion, as giving it a spear to use would be a significant nerf anyway. That said, the Improved Critical and Overwhelming Critical feats for its creature weapons were not applying correctly. A fix is in the pipeline and will be announced once live.

[Hunter548]

The old feats will simply be removed to avoid future confusion, as giving it a spear to use would be a significant nerf anyway.

Are you sure this would be the case? The Glabrezu is currently swinging with this, while the Nycaloth is swinging with this. I'm struggling to understand why the glabrezu should be so much weaker than the Nycaloth (And presumably the Gelugon) given that it's supposed to be roughly equivalent. Instead, the Glabrezu (because of this weapon Thing) isn't much stronger than the Vrock that preceeds it, offensively.

5 ab, 2.5x the crit range and a 50% higher crit modifier is massive. For reference, prior to the skin change the Glabrezu had about the same ab as the Nycaloth, with the same threat range/modifier.

[Aren]

The old feats will simply be removed to avoid future confusion, as giving it a spear to use would be a significant nerf anyway.

Are you sure this would be the case? The Glabrezu is currently swinging with this, while the Nycaloth is swinging with this. I'm struggling to understand why the glabrezu should be so much weaker than the Nycaloth (And presumably the Gelugon) given that it's supposed to be roughly equivalent. Instead, the Glabrezu (because of this weapon Thing) isn't much stronger than the Vrock that preceeds it, offensively.

5 ab, 2.5x the crit range and a 50% higher crit modifier is massive. For reference, prior to the skin change the Glabrezu had about the same ab as the Nycaloth, with the same threat range/modifier.

Having played with the Glabrezu recently, its damage is all over the place. Frankly, in its current state it is quite useless. It cannot handle level equivalent content.

[Batrachophrenoboocosmomachia]

The Glabrezu uses three different creature weapons for its attacks, which each have different damage properties (as you can see in the screenshot Hunter posted). With the bugged feats fixed, their crit ranges will expand from x2 to 16-20/x3.

Not to be dismissive, but within the context of this thread my main concern is that the creature as it exists is fully leveraging its current weapons (in this case, three different custom creature weapons). Right now, the Glabrezu isn't using those weapons to their fullest power, and that I can help with.

That said, in light of the previous posts, once I've verified that the broken feats have been replaced with working ones, I'll move this thread to the Feedback forum instead of Closed Bug Reports, and will ping some of my more balance-savvy colleagues about it!

[Hunter548]

The Glabrezu uses three different creature weapons for its attacks, which each have different damage properties (as you can see in the screenshot Hunter posted). With the bugged feats fixed, their crit ranges will expand from x2 to 16-20/x3.

Not to be dismissive, but within the context of this thread my main concern is that the creature as it exists is fully leveraging its current weapons (in this case, three different custom creature weapons). Right now, the Glabrezu isn't using those weapons to their fullest power, and that I can help with.

That said, in light of the previous posts, once I've verified that the broken feats have been replaced with working ones, I'll move this thread to the Feedback forum instead of Closed Bug Reports, and will ping some of my more balance-savvy colleagues about it!

All due respect, if all that's yet to be fixed on the Glabrezu is the addition of overwhelming critical and improved critical then no, the crit range will not expand from x2 to 16-20/x3. Off the top of my head, to get there from x2 you'd need to apply both of the WM feats too, as well as make the creature weapon keen; however, WM feats can't be applied to creature weapons.

All of that aside, none of it will fix the Glabrezu's AB either; as you can see here from the stats publicized when the various summon streams were changed a few years ago, the Glabrezu was intended to have 1 less AB than the Nycaloth - meaning it's got 4 less than it "should" have. My only guess there is the creature weapons are lacking enchantment bonus/attack bonus properties equivalent to what the spear it was equipped with prior to the hak model change.

[Batrachophrenoboocosmomachia]

Me just fix bad feats and make pretty rocks, me no like numbers. I'm checking with people who are smarter than me and who better will be able to weigh in! Thanks for your patience.

[Aren]

The Glabrezu uses three different creature weapons for its attacks, which each have different damage properties (as you can see in the screenshot Hunter posted). With the bugged feats fixed, their crit ranges will expand from x2 to 16-20/x3.

Not to be dismissive, but within the context of this thread my main concern is that the creature as it exists is fully leveraging its current weapons (in this case, three different custom creature weapons). Right now, the Glabrezu isn't using those weapons to their fullest power, and that I can help with.

That said, in light of the previous posts, once I've verified that the broken feats have been replaced with working ones, I'll move this thread to the Feedback forum instead of Closed Bug Reports, and will ping some of my more balance-savvy colleagues about it!

All due respect, if all that's yet to be fixed on the Glabrezu is the addition of overwhelming critical and improved critical then no, the crit range will not expand from x2 to 16-20/x3. Off the top of my head, to get there from x2 you'd need to apply both of the WM feats too, as well as make the creature weapon keen; however, WM feats can't be applied to creature weapons.

All of that aside, none of it will fix the Glabrezu's AB either; as you can see here from the stats publicized when the various summon streams were changed a few years ago, the Glabrezu was intended to have 1 less AB than the Nycaloth - meaning it's got 4 less than it "should" have. My only guess there is the creature weapons are lacking enchantment bonus/attack bonus properties equivalent to what the spear it was equipped with prior to the hak model change.

Ah, that was another thing that I seemed to experience - that the Glabrezu could not pierce DR of any kind. (I could just be misremembering though.)

[Aren]

Me just fix bad feats and make pretty rocks, me no like numbers. I'm checking with people who are smarter than me and who better will be able to weigh in! Thanks for your patience.

All good man!

[Batrachophrenoboocosmomachia]

So! You know what they say happens when you assume, right? I was totally pants-on-head wrong here about what was going on at first, but after following this rabbit hole deep enough, I think we have it! And for my wrongness, here it all is in its super-fun detail.

When we moved to haks, the Glabrezu model was updated from the Flesh Golem model to our current one. This was when the Glabrezu summon used a special spear, not rendered due to the Flesh Golem's MODELTYPE in the 2da. But on the new model, the spear snaps into the center of that hand, and looks dumb. Is there an easy fix? After peeling open the mdl to dig further...

...I found it uses lhand and rhand for their actual geometry instead of dummy nodes; they're not actually designed to hold weapons at all!

Presumably, the spear was removed for cosmetic effect (it really does look very silly in action), and the various creature weapons and creature feats were added to emulate the original stat block. This made sense enough for a short-term fix (just get it live!), on the assumption the feats would all Just Work and there'd be time to revisit something so small later. But there are two fairly obscure issues with the feats used to boost the various creature weapons to the power where the spear used to be.

First, Weapon Focus and Improved Critical only work on creature weapons if they're the "Unarmed Strike" variants of the feat. I originally thought this was the only issue. But second, the WM feats weren't firing because you need to have the associated Weapon of Choice feat for them to apply... and Weapon of Choice excludes both Creature Weapon and Unarmed Strike as options!

Since we can't work around the animation issue by using creature weapons, it's the spear after all. So with one more rejiggering of the Glabrezu's feat spread...

(The only change after this will be the slight reduction from 1d8 base damage to 1d6, to account for the damage changes made to spears. The wiki page will be updated correspondingly.)

We're going to reconfigure its new feat spread properly, and in the haks we'll make any held weapons properly invisible (and its equipped-movement anims don't look bad at all, in testing). I've got this working locally already and will be sending it into the pipeline soon. I'll bump this thread again after it's live and verified looking good.

As a sidenote, the detailed, objective feedback and details you guys provided, and the consistently respectful tone (especially pointing out where I had been outright incorrect, which certainly happens to the best of us! Particularly with regard to numbers here, which I remind you me no like), were tremendously welcome in this thread. It's a positive, constructive mindset and attitude that really helps us power through these bugs, especially in the volume we will always need to. So, thank you for caring, assorted demon-worshiper filth!

[Imperatrix]

Thanks a lot for your time on this, that should be a huge improvement.

[Aren]

So! You know what they say happens when you assume, right? I was totally pants-on-head wrong here about what was going on at first, but after following this rabbit hole deep enough, I think we have it! And for my wrongness, here it all is in its super-fun detail.

When we moved to haks, the Glabrezu model was updated from the Flesh Golem model to our current one. This was when the Glabrezu summon used a special spear, not rendered due to the Flesh Golem's MODELTYPE in the 2da. But on the new model, the spear snaps into the center of that hand, and looks dumb. Is there an easy fix? After peeling open the mdl to dig further...

...I found it uses lhand and rhand for their actual geometry instead of dummy nodes; they're not actually designed to hold weapons at all!

Presumably, the spear was removed for cosmetic effect (it really does look very silly in action), and the various creature weapons and creature feats were added to emulate the original stat block. This made sense enough for a short-term fix (just get it live!), on the assumption the feats would all Just Work and there'd be time to revisit something so small later. But there are two fairly obscure issues with the feats used to boost the various creature weapons to the power where the spear used to be.

First, Weapon Focus and Improved Critical only work on creature weapons if they're the "Unarmed Strike" variants of the feat. I originally thought this was the only issue. But second, the WM feats weren't firing because you need to have the associated Weapon of Choice feat for them to apply... and Weapon of Choice excludes both Creature Weapon and Unarmed Strike as options!

Since we can't work around the animation issue by using creature weapons, it's the spear after all. So with one more rejiggering of the Glabrezu's feat spread...

(The only change after this will be the slight reduction from 1d8 base damage to 1d6, to account for the damage changes made to spears. The wiki page will be updated correspondingly.)

We're going to reconfigure its new feat spread properly, and in the haks we'll make any held weapons properly invisible (and its equipped-movement anims don't look bad at all, in testing). I've got this working locally already and will be sending it into the pipeline soon. I'll bump this thread again after it's live and verified looking good.

As a sidenote, the detailed, objective feedback and details you guys provided, and the consistently respectful tone (especially pointing out where I had been outright incorrect, which certainly happens to the best of us! Particularly with regard to numbers here, which I remind you me no like), were tremendously welcome in this thread. It's a positive, constructive mindset and attitude that really helps us power through these bugs, especially in the volume we will always need to. So, thank you for caring, assorted demon-worshiper filth!

Your work is much appreciated, Batrachophrenoboocosmomachia!

[Aren]

http://prntscr.com/uepgem

Looks like the Glabrezu is now fixed. Great work!

[Batrachophrenoboocosmomachia]

http://prntscr.com/uepgem

Looks like the Glabrezu is now fixed. Great work!

Before I close this, was that screenshot taken on a character with GSF Conjuration? I'm safely assuming yes but want to be sure before closing.

[Aren]

http://prntscr.com/uepgem

Looks like the Glabrezu is now fixed. Great work!

Before I close this, was that screenshot taken on a character with GSF Conjuration? I'm safely assuming yes but want to be sure before closing.

You are correct. A level 22 warlock with GSF Conjuration.

[Batrachophrenoboocosmomachia]

Yay. Moving to Closed.