Presumably this is happening to arcane mages with the Spellslinger hero talent also.
Splinterstorm - Shatter all Embedded Frost Splinters, dealing their remaining periodic damage instantly.
Conjure a Frost Splinter for each Splinter shattered, then unleash them all in a devastating barrage, dealing (20% of Spell power) Frost damage to your target for each Splinter in the Splinterstorm.
Splinterstorm applies Winter’s Chill to its target.
Key Words: YOUR TARGET
When triggered, this spell is casting seemingly randomly. First obvious case was 1st boss in Siege of Boralus. Fighting pack to the left of Boss, boss not pulled. Splinterstorm triggered and rather than hitting my target, or any of the other targets we were in combat with, Splinterstorm shot all of it’s charges straight at the boss, pulling it in.
Boss was: NOT in combat, NOT the closest target, NOT a target I was facing (was not even on my screen, over 90 degrees to my right.
Replicating: Target dummies in Dornogal. Standing near center pylon and targeting South West “Dungeoneer’s Training Dummy” being closest to that target
When Splinterstorm triggers, it targets the “Normal Tank Dummy” to the south. This is consistent, with zero interaction with the target.
Obviously this causes frost mages to have a massive liability in M+, as we have zero control over the casting or targeting of this ability. The current playstyle of “Spam Ice Lance” is already a massive issue, now this making the spec unplayable in M+ as it could pull additional out of combat packs randomly.
TLDR: Frost mages can randomly pull out of combat mobs with Splinterstorm targeting out of combat mobs and have zero control over it’s targeting
EDIT: Checked and does indeed happen with Arcane’s version of the ability
6 Likes
Its true. It actually happened twice in a row today in that same dungueon… Almost breaking the mythic run from that splinter going away to the boss randomly.
I had the same thing happen to me in Siege of Boralas. We were fighting the Captain Lockwood boss on +5 and my splinters targeted a random out of combat mob and pulled it to wipe us.
This also happened in Dawnbreaker the same night.
This “bug” or whatever it is, is absolutely ruining spellslinger in m+. It’ll pull random mobs 30+ yards away behind me that I never even knew existed much less tried to attack.
Just want to bump this that the behavior of spellslinger changed on the September 23rd hotfix:
- Mage
- Spellslinger: Splinterstorm will now find a valid target within range to fire at if your current target is not valid.
This was to address the issue that having a non-valid target would infinitely stack splinters on nearby/focused enemies. However, the hotfix made the behavior just straight up worse because splinterstorm seems to not prioritize your actual valid target and seems to go to a random nearby target. As others have mentioned, this causes massive headaches in m+, especially siege of boralus, by unnecessarily pulling nearby trash causing wipes and depleted keys. I also fear that this behavior could be apparent in raid settings as well.
I understand this talent is changing completely in 11.0.5, but I would like to at least play with a fixed version that prioritizes valid targets until then.
I also just had this same situation happen to me in a Siege of Boralus. One time was while fighting the pack right before you enter the first bosses arena, Splinterstorm went off and pulled the next pack while I was fighting the pack before and was still targeting them. The second time happened it also happened in a Siege of Boralus while fighting the trash pack directly before the first boss. While targeting the pack it went off and fired directly at the boss. Both instances happened while I had an alive enemy targeted that should have been the valid target for it.
Just started dabbling with spellslinger, and sure enough this is still a bug in 11.0.5. Come on, blizzard!
This bug still exists! For goodness sake, blizzard, this is ridiculous! It basically makes the tree unplayable!
Actually now I’m thinking about it and rereading the talents, in this case it was technically related to the talent Augury Abounds since I popped Icy Veins, and that threw a bunch of splinters at a random mob. But that still seems like terrible design given that I was already targeting something. And since casting Icy Veins before starting combat is a pretty normal thing to do.