Here's the deal as best as I understand it:
Bards have different (and much more liberal) stacking rules than other classes. Up to now, those rules
applied to anything the Bard did - not just singing, but weapon procs as well. This meant that weapon
procs/effects which were spells (e.g., copies of another class' spell) would stack in circumstances where
the parent class couldn't stack a spell. For example, if a Bard proced Orb of Tishan on a MOB, then a
Chanter cast Tash, then a Bard proced Journeyman's Walking Stick, you'd get three additive MR debuffs (for
a massive MR reduction) where the parent class could only stack one. Verant kinda doesn't like this too
much, and I can't say I blame them.
So Verant was testing some code to make spell procs/effects from Bard-wielded items (weapons, armor, etc.)
follow the same stacking rules as those for normal casters. They were in the middle of testing this when
they screwed up some other piece of code and created a dupe bug, which caused them to put in the emergency
patch last Thursday. Sadly, their version control is not the best (as any experience Bard should well
know), and the incomplete and not-ready-for-prime-time stacking modifications went live at the same time.
The problem was that they flagged ALL item procs and effects as spells, when in fact several of the ones
on Bard items should have been flagged as songs. The biggest problem this caused was the Epic proc
failing to stack (even over itself) in many circumstances. I was on a raid last night where it proced and
I saw the following:
Your spell has failed to take hold.
Your spell has failed to take hold.
Your spell has failed to take hold.
Your spell has failed to take hold.
Your spell has failed to take hold.
Your spell has failed to take hold.
e.g., a failure for every member of the party. They apparently couldn't fix everything in time to make
this whole big change work correctly as of the most recent patch, so they removed all of the stacking
changes.
They'll put them back. I expect that all multi-class items and many Bard-only items with spell effects
(SS Bracers, for example) will no longer stack in cases where the parent class could not stack the spell.
Some small number of Bard items will be flagged as songs (Epic for one) and will stack as they used to.
This affects some very high-end items. It probably doesn't affect too many items that most of us have
seen. For myself, I expect the following:
My JWS won't stack on top of Tash.
My illusion items won't overwrite each other, which sucks since I hate the stupid werewolf form.
My Lute of the Howler won't stack with Focus (as the parent spell does not), but will stack with Raging
Strength, Mortal Deftness and Talisman of Kragg, so I can have the identical stats with four buffs rather
than two if I really want to.
The Epic will work as it did before.
They are NOT changing the way any songs stack (at least as of now).
Kenross Cantoforjado, Virtuoso of Innoruuk
----
"Egelhof, Tobias" wrote:
> no idea...
>
> there was some issues with stacking songs and some epic effects if i
> remember correctly. but in fact, i do not =)
>
> anyone has more information on this?
>
> tobi