healer-man/docs/COA_CATALOG_PROMOTION_2026-10-03.md

CoA catalog promotion — October 3, 2026

The active catalogs now use the pinned August 12 Vol'Jin talent capture and global BASE spell evidence. CoA remains Needs Testing. This completes the source and catalog foundation for further class mechanic implementation.

Source selection and offline reuse

The builder capture comes from srhinos/coa-datamine revision 5078f9ac22541c45c17a866c23aac6c12073de23. CoA spell/class evidence uses the paired local client extraction's global patch-T Spell, patch-M class metadata, and patch-S supporting tables. Classic Ascension data retains its original Area 52 records, including linked spell payloads. Separate accessors prevent shared IDs from crossing those scopes.

The archive supplements your extraction rather than replacing it. Its supporting tables match the local copies. Eleven missing August node spell IDs were found in the archive's global patch-T table. The selective download cached 26 compressed raw shards (4,650,843 bytes) and selected 48 records including class-only references and linked payloads. Forty-one records supplement missing local global rows. It retains all raw columns and inferred types, with pinned metadata and checksums. No full client archive or repeated Exiles crawl is needed.

npm run coa:reference:promote reads verified local caches. Promotion and historical reference rebuilds produced identical bytes with network access disabled. The lossless July baseline remains tracked separately for comparison.

Active catalog changes

• 21 classes, 91 playable tabs, and 3,618 nodes: six added, 436 changed, none removed.
• 701 ability entries and 2,917 talent entries, with 3,933 node-rank references.
• Resolved 174 encoded description fields from the original builder capture.
• Regenerated all 21 CoA runtime and talent UI shards. Non-CoA talent runtime records and UI shards are unchanged.
• The runtime catalog has 1,276 ability families, 3,395 ranks, 3,348 distinct rank spell IDs, and 578 hidden triggered payloads. Sourced starter spells include class-catalog-only references such as Rejuvenating Venom.
• Exported six missing icons from local BLPs, with zero placeholder fallbacks.
• Preserved all 1,822 progression-chain identities, 1,266 classic chains, 7,268 protected classic spell records, and the outputs of all 612 classic abilities.

The six added nodes are Mycelial Healing, Devourer, Dark Channeler, Crusher, Houndmaster's Whistle, and Skewer. Full before/after evidence and coverage gaps are in data/coa-reference/promotion-report.json.

Saved builds and remaining work

Saved CoA node keys remain resolvable under their original class. Saved ranks clamp to the captured maximum. Source changes include Agonizing Burns 1→2, Timed Attacks 2→1, Cultist node 6274 2→1, and Advisor's Perfidy 2→1.

Numeric IDs are not a guarantee of identical effects across source versions. August swaps the spell payloads of Agonizing Burns/Timed Attacks. It also swaps Dark Infusion/Darkward between Cultist nodes 30036 and 6274, including a change of tree. Existing saves contain no CoA capture-version metadata, so this update does not attempt an ambiguous semantic migration. Affected builds need review.

All August node ranks have global DBC evidence. Thirteen older progression ranks are absent from both selected global sources: 501862–501865, 501918–501920, 501922–501925, 502889, and 560469. Their IDs are retained and gaps are reported. The wider catalog/context audit reports 224 missing BASE spell records and three source connection warnings. These are not filled from Area 52.

Descriptions and client effects do not establish server-side proc timing, acquisition rules, or complete class behavior. Bespoke mechanics and targeted player/companion tests remain the next class-by-class phase.

Validation and browser evidence

All 44 pipeline/cache/source-policy tests and 62 focused game tests pass. The focused tests verify source separation, classic preservation, saved-rank clamping, runtime shard loading, sourced spell semantics, and explicit source gaps. Ready-five checks pass (7 game tests and 20 Python checks); no all-class balance sweep was run. All 21 runtime shards match their generated snapshot.

The negative DBC cast-time sentinel on Berserker Axe is retained in source evidence and clamped to an instant CoA runtime cast. Classic behavior is unchanged. A Tinker resource test was corrected to copy the matching maximum pools alongside the current pools; no production stats behavior was changed.

With network requests blocked, fetch reuses the complete cache, promotion repeats identically, and historical build/audit/lookup succeed. The promoted candidate SHA-256 is 9208e973c43c31d263fb429f7ab82a2cc6732e2a70bc14f482b6428c9b296091. The historical snapshot is e86031775dfac7e336361087c50ca23a0a7a86c36a760c85803bee4bcdb89351.

The production build and release-bundle verification pass. A browser smoke check created the local offline Coaaudit Witch Hunter and opened its five talent tabs. Houndmaster's Whistle displays the new icon, full description, and prerequisite gate. No warning/error logs were captured. This checks presentation at level 1; it does not exercise unlocked combat mechanics.

The optional local API server was absent during this offline preview. Development proxy policy/layout requests failed and offline defaults were used. Online roster and server policy synchronization were outside this check.

Screenshot: playtest-artifacts/coa-catalog-promotion/houndmaster-whistle.jpg.

See the pipeline guide for repeatable commands.