After participating in a brief dii.net sorc forum thread w/DaShiv regarding the problems w/TS, I was inspired to re-test some things. The results were interesting, and worthy of some of those chaos models that meteorologists use to predict real-life thunder storms.
For this test, I used a sorc with slvl 6 TS and went to Acts 1 and 2 on Normal difficulty. These places were chosen to avoid the following confound. If TS hits a target, but does low damage, then it's hard to tell whether TS missed or instead hit for very low damage. If I'm going up against monsters w/low HP, then the min damage of slvl 6 TS should be guaranteed to obliterate them if it hits at all. So, I should be able to distinguish b/t true hits and true misses.
And now, to work.
#1: This illustrates something that may not be obvious to some. TS needs a line-of-sight to operate. If I stand behind a stack of barrels, I may well be able to see potential targets, but the menacing clouds of TS will remain silent.
#2: Here we see a bone archer w/its back against a wall, standing NE of me. A bone mage threatens below. While venturing into this part of the map, 3 skeletons were killed by TS, as you can see. By the way, two things I noticed often were that TS will sometimes switch targets, rather than sticking w/the same one until it's dead, and also, TS won't necessarily attack the nearest monster. I've walked into packed rooms where TS immediately started attacking things I could hardly even see b/c they were so far away. More generally put, TS's choice of what to hit is quite chaotic.
#3: As you can see, the bone archer that was to the NE of me was killed by TS. This is significant b/c it shows that if a monster is next to a wall, that doesn't guarantee that TS won't hit it. However, look where the bone mage has moved off to. I now no longer have a line of sight. The clouds of TS grew silent until the bone mage eventually moved again, after which it was immediately vaporized.
#4: Here we have 3 bone archers. The one highlighted is standing against a SW wall.
#5: As you can see, its friends were swept away, but this bone archer was quite the lightning rod. I eventually got bored and smacked it w/my scepter.
#6: This scenario has me completely confused, as I'll try to explain over the next few screenshots. Here you see 1 dead skeleton and 3 bone archers. The 2 archers to the NE of me are the ones of interest. They both have a large obstacle to the SE of them, but the further one is also diagonally adjacent to the end-cap of a wall, which is NW of it.
#7: In order for TS to miss a target, it's apparently not enough for that target to have a large obstacle next to it. All that remains here is the bone archer w/barrels to the SE and a *wall fragment* to the NW of it.
#8: Here's me backing away from the bone archer. I was wondering if the difference in my X,Y coordinates would matter. It didn't. The archer was still merrily firing away at me, indifferent to my TS.
#9: In between TS shots, I quickly ran around the barrel structure in the hopes that that would make a difference. Boy, did it ever. *I have no idea why this change in position should matter.* My X,Y coordinates changed, and the archer changed the direction in which it was facing. One idea is that what matters is where the wall is, relative to the direction the monster is facing. But screenshots #13-15 would seem to disprove that theory. If my X,Y coordinates matter, then why didn't the archer explode when I moved to the position in screenshot #8? I'm just not sure what to say about this situation.
#10: Here's another example of what happens when a bone mage is standing next to a NE wall and meets up w/TS. Bones go flying everywhere.
#11: In this pic, I managed to get a bunch of burning dead to chase me into a corner. Note that in this scenario there'll be at least 1 standing next to a NE wall and at least 1 standing next to a SE wall. You can see which one was the last man...er,
undead man...standing.
#12: Another burning dead standing w/its back to a NE wall. I decided to stand right in front of it, to see if the close proximity would affect anything. It's already known that TS will sometimes miss repeatedly when the monster is standing right next to you. I guess this case shows that TS won't always miss in such a scenario.
#13: Here we have two burning dead, and they're kind enough to stand next to a NW wall while threatening me w/sharp objects.
#14: Here, we see the wicked falling before the righteous.
#15: And fallen. Again, whether I was standing next to a monster, or a little bit away from it, didn't seem to matter.
#16: This screenie shows at least 2 burning dead archers of importance, namely the ones standing next to walls. The furthest one, which I've highlighted, was standing next to a SW wall and was barely w/in my line of sight. (It was shooting at me, anyway.) I can vouch for the fact that it was hit by a TS bolt
but took no damage. It later moved closer to me, which proved to be a mistake...
So, what have we learned about TS? I think a few things.
(1) You need a line-of-sight in order for TS to attack.
(2) TS is chaotic enough so that one shouldn't try to predict what monster it'll go after, if more than one target is available.
(3) All the rumors you heard about TS missing targets standing next to walls were basically true. BUT, the targeting problem is by far most often seen when the walls are facing SE or SW, w/re to your position. I was unable to reproduce the bug for NE or NW walls, given the limited testing I did. However, screenshots #6-9 show that it may yet happen in some cases.
Oh well, so much for my morning... Special thanks to DaShiv for giving me a gentle nudge in the direction of making a report.
VV
