Hey fellas, it's the doc. Been a while since I've made a real post but this one's a hum-dinger. I believe I've found the single mechanic that causes stealth and vanish to break inexplicably.
I'm sure you've all experienced being un-stealthed while near another rogue without actually being attacked, or of course, your vanish has been broken- not by an incoming attack landing inappropriately due to latency but seemingly for no reason whatsoever.
Any rogue worth their salt understands that the vanish bug isn't completely an issue of latency, and that theres more dimensions to the bug than just those damn auto-swings. The problem is, no one seems to be able to reliably re-create the mechanic behind the faulty ability. Sure, we can demonstrate on video vanish breaking- but again people can always argue latency is the problem.
Well folks, heres a little science experiment you can do to demonstrate the very core of the issue, and it's quite simple.
Have another rogue sap you. Have him stay in your visible range, preferably right in front of you but so long as they're visible, this should work. Now, while you are incapacitated, you can remove his stealth simply by sending a copious amount of combat pulses. These are initiated from every offensive attack, so spamming hemorrhage, blind, feint if it suits your fancy- or even spamming your right mouse button to initiate an auto attack will work. These pulses will remove the offending rogues stealth, all the while you're sapped.
*Edit for clarification.
Two important notes to this experiment, this bug is as reliable to recreate as a vanish bug itself. It may take several attempts. The other important detail is which abilities you choose to put into the macro; they must be abilities that can land within the distance and direction you are facing the rogue. IE, adding Backstab to the macro if the rogue is facing you will not cause any pulse from that ability. I think this is due to the pulses not being received by the enemy player if they do not pass the range/direction checks the server performs.
Please, try it yourself. Post your results, your experiences. I believe this to be the core of the vanish issue- those invisible pulses sent to and fro from the server. Like when an enemy player is most likely spamming an ability (Lets say, a ranged attack?) but it doesn't go off because you vanished first- and rightfully so, that vanish should work. However, that ranged attack being spammed is still sending those ever elusive combat pulses. Your auto-swings send them too, as do pets and the like. I feel compelled to address this issue much more thoroughly and have been planning to so, I'll refine this post after it gains a few pages. This is just a rough draft but it's such big news that I had to get this post out as soon as I could.
Guys, this is the core of the issue. The developers won't be able to ignore such blatant silly mechanics after this gets around.
Updates, after further testing it seems the best way to incur a result is to make a macro of three separate melee abilities. Also, inexplicably, I can only incur the unstealthing after the 5-second period in the sap. So far, no rogues I've tested this with have become unstealthed the first five seconds of sap. The reason this doesn't make sense besides the obvious, is all those times being close to another rogue (who's spamming cheapshot/sap) in stealth immediately takes you out on the first pass. This doesn't happen often, but each time I've experienced the random-unstealthing issue before it was at the beggining of a duel.
Also, everyone crediting me with finding this, I've gotta split the credit right down the middle with Spree (Daggerspine)/Staticz (Tichondrius)/Boyzz (Underbog). He transfers allot.Cool dude, deserves buhtsekz imo.
I'll post more tomorrow.