[#SomeChanges Suggestion] Engineering Transporter debuff stacking exploit

[simonizeshow]

Currently on Wrath BETA and in TBC, the engineering teleporters can be exploited to make your character extremely large. With this increased size comes increased melee attack range - to the point of allowing melee standing on the ground in the Felmyst encounter to be able to attack Felmyst during the air phase. I don't know every single encounter in Wrath, but being able to do this throughout Wrath to get meaningfully increased attack range for melee sounds like it is almost guaranteed to find some degenerate interaction.

The "exploit" works the same way in both TBC Classic and Wrath BETA.

1. Activate Ultrasafe Teleporter: Toshley's Station or Ultrasafe Teleporter: Area 52
2. Pay close attention to your cast timer, and ALT+F4 to close the game just before the cast completes.
3. If done correctly, when you reload your game and login your character will NOT have teleported and your transporter item will NOT be on cooldown. If you are lucky, you will have one of the many possible random debuffs the teleporter can give you.

Because this method doesn't incur the item's cooldown, it can be used to stack multiple of the transporter debuffs onto your character at once. Soul Split: Good, Soul Split: Evil, Transporter Malfunction: "You feel larger somehow" all stack and all increase your character's size and melee attack range. Transporter Malfunction: "Looks like your pattern matrix got mixed up with the last person to use the transport pad." allows you to become a Tauren who have larger hit boxes and thus larger attack range compared to other races.

I do not have any idea why it is that this method works to allow stacking of these debuffs. I think the game is definitely better if this is not possible because it is just super degenerate - I mean really, making melees have such big attack range that they can attack a flying dragon? Surely there will be more absurd ways to abuse huge character models or huge attack ranges in Wrath and my # somechanges suggestion is to see a Wrath of the Lich King where this teleporter cannot be abused like this to reach such absurd sizes.

Here are two images, one showing the debuff stacking on Wrath BETA and the other showing melee still attacking Felmyst during air phase due to debuff stacking: https://imgur.com/a/svvSOPb

EDIT: Potential fixes could be as simple as making sure none of the transporter debuffs can stack - "group" them up so the game will always overwrite an existing transporter debuff with a new one. In "normal" use you could never have multiple of the debuffs at once anyways since the cooldown of the item is 4 hours and the longest debuff that increases size is only 1 hr.

The relevant spell IDs for all the size increasing transporter debuffs are: Transporter Malfunction: "You feel larger somehow" - 36895 Transporter Malfunction: "Looks like your pattern matrix got mixed up with the last person to use the transport pad." - 36897 Soul Split: Evil - 36900 Soul Split: Good - 36901

Or figure out why this is possible on the backend and patch that out, but that sounds like it would be way more difficult and potentially interact with other things.

[iamjackthelad]

Worth noting that even if it were only possible to get 1 of these debuffs, either Tauren or one of the 20% size increases (whichever gives the larger melee range) would still be "mandatory" in hardcore raid environments. It's a noticeable DPS increase and feels great on trash as any melee to be able to swap targets and hit/cleave things without moving when mobs aren't perfectly stacked.

[simonizeshow]

If I could have it my way, I'd just say that size increasing effects should not modify your melee attack range / whirlwind range / blade flurry range.

[simonizeshow]

Wherefore posted about this and had some additional ideas for potential solutions. His ticket was closed as a duplicate but I want to include his other solution ideas here:

" Prevent the debuffs from stacking with each other. They seem to be designed as a fun quirk of a 4-hour cooldown item, not a powerful-infinitely-stacking debuff machine, and just one debuffs is generally not enough size to make a meaningful difference in gameplay. Prevent the debuffs from affecting Engineers of a certain level, or characters of a certain level. Maybe you are too powerful for a puny Outland technology to affect you? Reveal the precence of these debuffs to the Combat Log (as was done for countless other buffs and consumables), so Warcraft Logs can ban the interaction themselves, in the interest of performance-oriented players competing on that website. Flag these debuffs under a system similar to Season of Mastery's World Buff Removal system - clear these upon entering a raid instance. This would keep the fun interaction available for all players, just not during raid encounters. Somehow remove the ability to gain the Teleporter debuffs from force closing the game before the cast finishes. This sounds like a scary code change that can be avoided with the above suggestions. "

[JamminL]

Needs a retest on wotlk beta

[Bakurersu]

As far as I can tell the following buffs/debuffs no longer effect melee range in build 3.4.0.45327, Transporter Malfunction: "You feel larger somehow" - 36895 Transporter Malfunction: "Looks like your pattern matrix got mixed up with the last person to use the transport pad." - 36897 Soul Split: Evil! - 36900 Soul Split: Good - 36901 Tested on dummy in Shattrath and in a duel with another player. Screenshots show standing at max melee range with: No Buffs Soul split: Evil! Soul split: Evil! + Teleporter Malfunction (36897) rerolled to Tauren Soul split: Evil! + Soul split: Good + Teleporter Malfunction (36897) rerolled to Tauren + Teleporter Malfunction [You feel larger somehow] + Evil Twin Duel with no debuffs Duel with Soul split: Evil! + Soul split: Good + Teleporter Malfunction (Horde) rerolled to Tauren + Teleporter Malfunction [You feel larger somehow] + Evil Twin

Looks to me like the distance from the centre of the player to the target stays the same reguardless of how many size debuffs the player has.

[simonizeshow]

Good riddance with this extra melee range bull****. Wonderful!