Ignite Blood Fizzle Modifier
 

Howdy all,

I was chatting with a guildie earlier and they asked me if Ignite Blood was still worth using even with the heightened fizzle chance. When I said I hadn't noticed anything different myself, they pointed me to the wiki page... And surely enough:

"Heats the blood of your target, causing 56 damage every six seconds. -1176hp & 4.704 dpm. This spell has a fizzle adj stat of 25, making it much more likely to fizzle than other spells. It's not uncommon to fizzle 4 times in a row."

This made me curious! Is this a legit thing or did someone just edit this onto the wiki after some horribly bad luck? Fortunately, this can be tested. I'm posting this here just in case there's some random person in the future that is similarly skeptical and decides to google it.

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I brought my necro (60 w/ 235 alteration) over to WFP and decided to start with Ignite Blood vs Bond of Death. Both were level 49 Alteration spells. Seemed like a good way to start.

• Ignite Blood: 100 casts - 14 fizzles
• Bond of Death: 100 casts - 3 fizzles

That's not an insignificant difference. My skepticism challenged, I then wondered if maybe lifetap related spells had some special modifier. So I decided to repeat the same test, but this time with Cajole Undead on one of the pathing decaying skeletons. That's another level 49 Alteration spell.

• Ignite Blood: 100 casts - 8 fizzles
• Cajole Undead: 100 casts - 0 fizzles

Okay, yeah, there's probably something to this... But what if it really is just pure chance? Once more, just to be sure! I grabbed another mob and did another bout, this time with Paralyzing Earth, another level 49 Alteration spell

• Ignite Blood: 100 casts - 14 fizzles
• Paralyzing Earth: 100 casts - 1 fizzle

Yup, can't ignore that... But what if it's related to the spell line? What if all the fire DoT spells have this modifier? Lets test Boil Blood (29)!

• Boil Blood: 100 casts - 2 fizzles
• Paralyzing Earth: 100 casts - 4 fizzles

Ignite Blood is looking like it's on its own... But, hear me out, what if it's because I'm so much higher level? Maybe Pyrocruor will be worse!

• Pyrocruor: 100 casts - 2 fizzles

Yup, it's just Ignite Blood. Ignite Blood almost certainly has a fizzle modifier. That said, Ignite Blood is definitely still worth using! That spell is such a power jump.

If you want to see the full the log file, go here. As a note, I removed any lines that were unrelated to the test. Log entries like guild chat, reapplying roots, getting hit by random orc pawns, demi-liching, etc. have all been removed. I didn't touch any of the rows related to the spellcasting.

Anyway, there's a useless bit of information for ya'll!

Thanks for the update

This is awesome! Thanks for digging into this, I love this kind of nuance and deep dive into the game. I wonder if there are any other spells that have the fizzle mod as well?

No idea! This was the first time I'd heard of a fizzle modifier. Since it doesn't apply to Kunark-era's Pyrocruor, I'm thinking this might have been a Classic-era specific thing applied to Ignite Blood as it was a necro's capstone DoT. If there are other spells with a fizzle mod like this, I'd start by looking at the Classic-era level 49 spells of other spellcasters.

This is pretty surprising, I had no idea this was a thing.

You guys must not have played a shaman ;)

Canni V has an insane fizzle rate

NPCs don't fizzle so it's just a free -100 fire lure for high level necro NPCs to totally bypass your fire resist. Annoying.

Boil Blood

Comes with the usual disclaimers about Lucy's data, but it confirms the 25 modifier.

Apparently, so does our friend Feign Death (I've fizzled 7 times in a row before) as well as shared priest Healing line.

Only looked at a few spells, but it appears not every spell has a fizzle modifier (guess these are baseline) and I haven't seen a negative one yet.

Guess its a matter of 1. do p99 spell 'fizzle adj' match Lucy's stuff? and 2. should it? is that a classic parameter for spells?

The cool thing about this spell is it comes at 49 along with lich and bond of death and suddenly you just feel insanely powerful. Druids actually have a better dot before this. Was fun for a few levels shredding through things, but I found little use for it at 51 once I got splurt unless the occasional burn was needed.