Update - looks like we’ve been heard! Latest PTR patch notes for the AQ40 patch say:
“- Fixed an issue that caused some items with running or mount speed bonuses to not correctly stack multiplicatively.”
Just logged onto the PTR to test it, can CONFIRM IT’S FIXED!
Awesome!
It appears that mount speed bonuses are being calculated incorrectly - up until Warlords of Draenor, mount speed bonuses were always multiplicative (as they should be) as they added a percentage of your mounted speed onto your existing mounted speed.
Post WoD, mount speed bonuses started adding your running-on-foot speed onto your mounted speed - I remember being very annoyed when they initially did this. So for example, instead of Crusader Aura taking your epic mount speed from 200% to 240% (as it should - that’s a true 20% bonus), it started only boosting mounted speed to 220% - since it was adding your running speed onto it instead of multiplying your existing mounted speed.
It appears Classic WoW is actually using the post-WoD model of calculating mount speed. I tested it in game by running “/run print(GetUnitSpeed(“player”) / 7 * 100);” and it seems that Carrot on a Stick is only boosting my speed from 160% to ~163%, when it should be boosting it to 164.8%. Would love if this could be fixed!
It was definitely multiplicative in every iteration of the game right up until the Warlords of Draenor pre-patch in 2014. I’ve always loved mount speed bonuses and I remember immediately noticing the difference the day they implemented this change.
To be honest though, I think the terminology of additive vs multiplicative tends to confuse people and it’s not particularly helpful in getting the point across. Often, people get the impression that it only affects how multiple speed bonuses interact with each other - but this is not the case. Even if you only have one mount speed bonus (a carrot on a stick, or crusader aura in TBC, whatever), this change still affects how it’s calculated.
The heart of the issue is that we’re not having our speed boosted by a percentage of our mounted speed (as it should be), we’re having our walking speed added onto it. To help get the point across, imagine if the tooltip of Carrot on a Stick said “adds 3% of your on-foot walking speed to your mounted speed”. This is what’s happening.
It doesn’t help that Blizzard tends to display speed bonuses of any kind as a percentage of your walking speed. I’ve noticed a lot of people seem to look at that number and think “Hey, it went up by 3% right? Working as intended!” without looking into it a little deeper.
Yet you can find people swearing it’s additive and swearing it’s multiplicative. Sift through some old comments on wowhead. You’ll see what I mean. People will say they used an addon to show speeds and then prove it was additive, then people will say they used the same addon and prove it was multiplicative.
This macro will give you all of the stats you need to know. Addons back then were just using something similar in LUA.
/script x=GetUnitSpeed(“player”) DEFAULT_CHAT_FRAME:AddMessage(format(“Speed: %d yds/sec, %.1f kph, %.1f mph, %d%% normal run speed”,x,x3600/1093.6133,x45/22,x/7*100))
Upon reflection I’d rather avoid using the words “additive” and “multiplicative” entirely to be honest, because every time this topic gets brought up, the words only serve to confuse people. Some tend to assume we’re talking about how multiple mount speed buffs interact together, which is actually not the case.
A better way to describe it is that before WoD, when mount speed boosts were being calculated, they always used your mounted speed as the base. So for a real-world example, if you were driving along the highway at 100km/h and you wanted your car to drive 20% faster, you’d just increase your speed to 120km/h, right? Right, and that’s how it always worked in WoW pre-WoD.
Right now (in both Retail and now Classic too), when the game calculates a mount speed buff, it instead says “Ah, so you want me to make your horse go 10% faster? Hang on, let me see how fast you walk on foot, take a percentage of that and add that onto it instead”. That’s probably the best way I can explain it.
Amazing analogy, and yes, you are correct. Carrot on a stick doesn’t increase my mounted speed by 3%, it calculates 3% of my walking speed and adds it on top of my mount speed for some reason.
And yes, I was around in TBC when we started doing the math and it 100% wasn’t like this. 310% mount with 20% crusader aura made it so you had 492% of your base walking speed.
Ah I see. So epic mount would be 200% x 3% (1.03) = 206%
likewise with spurs would be additional 3, then riding.
So with all possible movement increases it would be 200%*(1.09) = 218%
With all this being said, mounts definitely feel way too slow. Mobs should at most get a single hit off on you while riding by with spurs/gloves/carrot/epic
Not to mention mobs already lag behind face agro, so they ALWAYS hit you from behind. Working properly, with an epic mount, you should be able to run face first into a mob, take first hit to the front to avoid daze, then be outside of melee before the second. You should almost never be in danger of getting dazed off your mount if you have your epic
But in live, it’s a double wammy. Spell batching/laggy mobs, combined with too slow of mounts = almost always getting 2 hits on your back from every single mob
In fact, mobs have zero problem agroing onto you when your back is to them, but you literally would need to stop for a full second to have them agro on you from the front. It’s like they seriously wait until you pass them to agro.
Yep, that’s correct - that’s how it should be working.
Fun fact: the way it’s working right now, if you have an epic mount and you equip a Carrot on a Stick (which should be a 3% mounted speed buff), you’ll only be going 1.5% faster than you were before you equipped it.
Bumping this as it’s still an issue and I’m still not seeing it on the known issues list. This absolutely needs to be fixed, these items and that enchant are currently functioning at HALF of what they should be. This is a significant problem that should not be pushed aside. It effects absolutely everyone that plans on ever using any speed bonuses for their mount.
Can confirm it was multiplicative at least up to wotlk, paladin and dk bonus increased flight speed by 20% but a 310% speed pally/dk was only slightly faster than a 310% speed mount on any other class. The reason it wasn’t multiplicative in wotlk is because 310 x 1.2 = 372 or 60% faster than anyone else, which would have been a significant difference.
Since vanilla mounts only scaled to 100% and mount speed increases were scarce it appeared additive.
Mount speed was later changed to movement speed (100%) + mount speed. So your “movement speed” on an epic mount would be 200% (100+100) or epic flying mount 380 (100+280).
It was changed to additive because 410% movement speed (100+310) multiplied by paladin/dk 20% would end up giving them 492% movement speed (410x1.2) which would be absurd because they could then fly 82% faster than any other class.
Paladins and DKs did indeed fly at 492 speed in every expansion right up until the Warlords of Draenor pre-patch at the end of 2014, and this was never a problem.
They weren’t flying 82% faster than any other class - keep in mind that movement speed is expressed as a percentage of walking speed. Even if you add 82% walking speed onto a flying mount, that still only means they’re effectively going 20% faster than other classes are. I find that it helps to just remove the percentage number when discussing this since it tends to only add unnecessary confusion.
Paladins/DKs were flying at 492, but every other class was flying at 451 because they had the 10% mount speed guild perk introduced in Cataclysm anyway. But even before Cataclysm, other classes could easily equip a Riding Crop or Skybreaker Whip to get themselves to 451 anyway. Effectively, Paladins and DKs were flying 9% faster than other classes were - which was perfectly fine, it was a perk of rolling those classes and it added flavour.
So the consensus still stands then. Mounts should be running at 218 with boots/gloves/carrot
When I do the speed command it tells me 208 so we’re losing a percent anyways for some reason. Possibly another post 2.0 change to enchant or Spurs or
If you add the whole spell batching delaying mob agro to the mix it’s impossible to get the smooth zone run throughs that should be possible with an epic mount and riding gear
Unless you’re riding extremely poorly getting dazed off your mount should be pretty much impossible.
You should be able to run right at mobs, agro the first hit and run through them and out of melee range before the second hit queues to your back leaving no room for a daze.
Instead, you’re already too slow and mobs wait until you’re either right on top or past them to agro completely throwing off this flow due to the server lag
You see people running around mobs with epic mounts which shouldn’t be the standard maneuver. That’s standard for normal mounts.
With epics, standard practice is riding straight through the mob unless it has a slow or other mechanic. This isn’t wise in classic because of the universal lag
Should be maxing out at 218 with every buff, yeah.
I just hope they fix this at some point for Classic, especially if there’s a chance of it going on to TBC - funny story, I originally made a paladin as my first alt in TBC just because of how cool Crusader Aura was. I loved galloping across the map at 240 speed!
By the way, if your speed command is saying it’s 208 it’s probably because the displayed number is being rounded down - it’s not displaying decimal places. You’re most likely actually going at 208.999 or something like that. For me, running a speed command tells me a level 40 mount is bringing me to 159, but my actual speed is 159.9996 or something. I had a command that was showing speed accurately with decimal places but for some reason it stopped working a couple weeks ago… /shrug
To me, honestly I’d rather just see them fix spell batching in general and have mobs actually agro on you before youre literally touching them when they’re the same level as you, that would solve a lot of the headache that we currently have on epic mounts.
Okay, lets pretend that Blizz didn’t have the original codes and logs of the game they created. SO WHAT IF THE SPEED IS MULTIPLICATIVE OR ADDITIVE?
If it is one way for me it will be the same for your enemy and your friends, nobody is losing. Are you guys really that petty that you MUST have that extra 2.37% speed? I mean, people were having meltdowns about blob shadows so I don’t know why I expected anything different.
