Abnormal fizzle rate at 40.
 

Just reached level 40 along with a shaman buddy of mine. We have both noticed that we are fizzling a shit load now. I can easily be at 90% mana, be ready to pull, and go to cast a fire shield on my pet and fizzle to about 60%.

By the time I would med back up to 90 to engage the mob, the fire shield would wear off.

We have tested this on low level spells as well as ones we got at 39. My see invisibility spell I got at 16 is fizzling way more then it did from 16-39. My skill is around 100 in divination.

Thought it was appropriate to report.

You'll fizzle more as you level up if your relevant casting skills don't increase at the same rate. I don't know if there's some extra breakpoint at 40, but I expect it's more a matter of perception. 100 divination is around max at level 20, but it's only half of your max at level 40. If you've leveled too fast for casting skills to follow, which is easy with 10x XP and skills like abjuration that don't get used constantly, then that's why you fizzle more the higher level you get. Especially if you then try to use higher-level spells that you gain as you level.

hard numbers would be beneficial here. Look through your logs and gather info for other lvls

60% fizzle is this out of a sample size of 10,20,100 casts? Sometimes you just get unlucky. I had gate become unstable for me twice before. Not saying there is not a problem but if you get a chance you should give more information

I thought the way casting skills worked was that your skill had to be relevant to the level you got the spell. I.e. enchanter gets invis at 1 but shaman doesn't get til 29. Enchanter would only need 10 in divination to have a 90% or whatever chance to cast whereas a shaman would need to have 150 in divination to have the same chance to cast.

I remember this being an issue in kunark when shaman and druids got superior heal because they were more likely to fizzle it than a cleric who got it at level 34.

That said I have noticed some abnormal fizzles for me also. Fizzling dots 3 times in a row, heals three times in a row, canni three times in a row, with maxed skills at 50. *shrug*

the fizzle rate on the blue server has always seemed unusually high to me but i never had hard data so i never bothered to do anything but grumble about it in groups here and there.

It's weird. My experience on p99 (blue) was that spells where I had shitty skill level would fizzle way less than live. But it felt like spells that I had reasonable skill in would fizzle more. If that makes sense.

that's pretty much my exact same observation. fizzle rates were too low when you had no skill, too high when you were proficient. but like i said, any time you post something without evidence you get trolled into oblivion and i don't really care that much since you can just macro every spell so everything casts anyway regardless of fizzles.

Grabbing some screenshots when server is back up

It depends on the spell too. For example, the Cannibalize series probably had the highest fizzle rate on Live than any other spell (which was okay considering they don't cost mana). It was nothing more than a mere inconvenience; most shaman would create a hotkey that would /cast Cannibalize multiple times so that you only had to press 1 button even with the abnormally high fizzle rate. Cannibalize fizzles significantly less here. It was completely normal to have streaks of 5+ fizzles with maxed spell schools including Specialization casting Cannibalize 4 at level 60.

Well Canni 4 would obviously fizzle a lot based on what I was saying before. The higher level you get the spell the less of a "gap" between your skill rating and the rating required for the skill you have. Canni IV is a level 58 spell. At 60 your skill cap hasn't changed making it 235 I think (the same as 50) whereas to be on "par" for canni you would need a skill of 295. You just notice the fizzles a fuckton on canni cuz you spam it whereas you don't with other spells.

Like my example before. For a cleric, superior heal is a level 34 spell. So your skill to be on par for it would need to be 175 and at 50 your skill cap is 235 (at 60 also) so as you are 60 points over par your fizzle rate should be next to nothing. But for a shaman who gets superior heal at 53 their skill would need to be 270 to be on par for the cast but as the cap is 235 they fall 35 points below par and thus fizzle it more frequently than a cleric would.

I would wager if you cast canni 1 at 60 you would almost never fizzle it.

I also think it's sorta percentage based, i.e. casting a spell that you would need 50 skill to cast when you have 20 skill vs a spell you need 250 skill and you have 220 skill in, the 50 skill would fizzle way more as you have a difference of 60 percent vs a difference of only 12 percent. Does that make sense?

I am not sure if this is how it works on p1999 but I think this is how it worked on live.