Interaction of Ability Accuracy with Nodes is Fundamentally Flawed
Hype4Avengers
Member Posts: 19 ★
I think my point is best explained with examples:
1) Ability Accuracy reduction from champions like Domino, Archangel, Magneto and from Concussion interact with Matador in a very weird way. They fail the part of the node that reads "the attacker gains 1 bar of power every time the defender activates a special attack". They don't fail the part of the node that reads "this is the only way the Attacker can gain power in this fight". So if you have 100% AA reduction you are power locked. This is especially funny in the Act 7 Rhino boss fight where concussion is a viable way to get around Tantrum, but there's also Matador and Power Shield.
2) Ability Accuracy reduction, namely Quake, can bypass Window of Opportunity but not Stunning Reflection.
3) Ability Accuracy reduction can fail Got A Light (you have a chance to incinerate the opponent with your attacks). This happened to me when my Aegon reached a high enough combo in the Act 7 path, which was annoying because the path also has Pleasure to Burn.
These examples highlight two fundamental problems. Firstly, reducing the ability accuracy of the defender can shut down nodes that help the attacker. In some cases it will shut down part of a node that helps you and not shut down the other part that is annoying for you. I find it very hard to believe that this is intentional because it makes no sense. I think it's more likely that Kabam doesn't fully understand how their own code works. Bottom line is, ability accuracy reduction should not shut down nodes or parts of nodes that help you.
Secondly, there needs to be more transparency around which nodes are affected by ability accuracy and which ones aren't, perhaps by including that in node descriptions. In any case, it shouldn't be a system of trial and error to figure out if it will work or not. I would be interested to hear what others think about this, and I hope kabam will figure out ability accuracy and nodes because it doesn't seem like they have.
1) Ability Accuracy reduction from champions like Domino, Archangel, Magneto and from Concussion interact with Matador in a very weird way. They fail the part of the node that reads "the attacker gains 1 bar of power every time the defender activates a special attack". They don't fail the part of the node that reads "this is the only way the Attacker can gain power in this fight". So if you have 100% AA reduction you are power locked. This is especially funny in the Act 7 Rhino boss fight where concussion is a viable way to get around Tantrum, but there's also Matador and Power Shield.
2) Ability Accuracy reduction, namely Quake, can bypass Window of Opportunity but not Stunning Reflection.
3) Ability Accuracy reduction can fail Got A Light (you have a chance to incinerate the opponent with your attacks). This happened to me when my Aegon reached a high enough combo in the Act 7 path, which was annoying because the path also has Pleasure to Burn.
These examples highlight two fundamental problems. Firstly, reducing the ability accuracy of the defender can shut down nodes that help the attacker. In some cases it will shut down part of a node that helps you and not shut down the other part that is annoying for you. I find it very hard to believe that this is intentional because it makes no sense. I think it's more likely that Kabam doesn't fully understand how their own code works. Bottom line is, ability accuracy reduction should not shut down nodes or parts of nodes that help you.
Secondly, there needs to be more transparency around which nodes are affected by ability accuracy and which ones aren't, perhaps by including that in node descriptions. In any case, it shouldn't be a system of trial and error to figure out if it will work or not. I would be interested to hear what others think about this, and I hope kabam will figure out ability accuracy and nodes because it doesn't seem like they have.
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The first part of your post is also spot on. I turned pacify off because it was screwing up so many Cav EQ nodes. There are people who keep defending the interaction saying ability accuracy applies to everything. But as you pointed out, it doesn't. If my AA has 3 neuros on the defender, I do not start gaining power.
They are complaining about the inconsistent application of AA reduction within an individual node.
Not everything has ability accuracy. That could probably be explained better, but it isn't inconsistent. Which is to say, the game engine itself isn't, and can't even be inconsistent. It applies ability accuracy reduction on everything with ability accuracy. It can't do anything else.
"Bottom line is, ability accuracy reduction should not shut down nodes or parts of nodes that help you."
Effects like ability accuracy reduction are just neutral effects that can benefit the player and can also hurt the player circumstantially. Kabam is fully aware that sometimes these effects can have side effects that run opposite to the direct effects.
I don't agree with you about "AAR only affecting things with ability accuracy" being consistent. In my opinion it's incredibly arbitrary which nodes have ability accuracy and which don't. Why shouldn't stun immunity have ability accuracy each time a stun is attempted? In your explanation of Matador and the triggers, it can also easily be argued that the power suppression has a 'trigger' each time the attacker would gain power. Why shouldn't the power suppression be failed on 'triggering' power gain by landing a hit?
You can stop a bleed debuff by AAR but when it activates, AAR can't stop it from ticking.
Madator's power suppression is activated at the start of the fight. It's like a bleed debuff. Once active AAR can't do anything. But AAR can stop you from gaining power when special attack is launched.
See this-
Lock On was active on Juggs and Falc hit him.
He shouldn't activate Unstoppable because of DAAR. But he activated. Because Unstoppable is like that bleed debuff. Once active AAR can't do anything. Same applies to Falter which causes attacks to miss.
You say it can be argued that the power suppression in Matador has a trigger, but remember that this isn't hypothetical perspective: the game engine itself has one single absolute answer to this question. Either the power suppression is triggered, or it isn't and is just always there. This is a statement of mechanics, not philosophy.
So the question is, do you think Matador's power suppression was created in such a way so that it accounts for all possible ways you can gain power and triggers on every single one of them? Do you think if you hit the target, power suppression triggers to suppress offensive combat power, and when you are hit power suppression triggers again and suppresses defensive combat power, and when you proc a power gain buff power suppression triggers again and suppresses power gain buff effects and when you land a power steal effect power suppression triggers gain and suppresses the power steal power gain, plus every other possible way to gain power? If you were the power designer, would you simply apply a power suppression effect period, or would you create a power suppression effect with a dozen different triggers? Can you even list every single trigger clause necessary to ensure Matador works as observed?
We can't always know from observation how effects are implemented without careful study, because there are often multiple ways to achieve the same effect. But sometimes the in-game effects lend themselves to believing that one way is far more likely than all the others, and in this case Matador's power suppression seems logically to be something that isn't triggered, because it is far easier to list all the ways you can get power (there's just one) than to list all the ways Matador prevents power gain. So while this may not be obvious to the average player who doesn't think about the game mechanics, it isn't weirdly inconsistent per se because there is an obvious line of thought that suggests the mechanics should work in the way they actually work in-game.
For example, Window of Opportunity vs Stunning Reflection.
Window of Opportunity has a cooldown, and is not persistent throughout the fight. Therefore, it is a conditional node that can be affected by AAR since AAR affects abilities triggering at the point of occurrence.
Whereas Stunning Reflection triggers at the start of the fight and hence not affected by AAR (only at the start of the fight) unless you use champs with built-in AAR (eg Blade with Danger Sense).
This can also be observed when Blade shuts down nodes (eg Bleed). I believe, in layman’s language, how the nodes activation was coded was:
- Fight starts. Champions run to each other.
- Game activates all persistent nodes (eg Heal block, Bleed, etc). This is subjected to AAR at the point of fight start.
- Game activates all conditional nodes if conditions are fulfilled.
I’ve not tested this but I have a feeling that if you’re able to use AA, shut down Stun Reflection with Poison, then convert them into neuros, stun reflection will likely be always on cooldown as long as the refresh is affected by AAR. (The cooldown being a conditional node.)
Also, nodes are part of the defenders’ abilities, and therefore, should be affected by AAR. There’s even a special node that stops defenders having their AAR reduced.
I found a little demonstration of Matador failing to power lock blade
However, not all percent chance things are ability accuracy. Critical hit chance is not an ability accuracy, and is completely unaffected by changes in ability accuracy. Critical hit chance is determined by critical hit rating, a completely independent stat from ability accuracy.
Think of the nodes as ability grants. When a defender is sitting on a node that has a node buff, that node buff grants that champion an ability. That champion then uses that ability as if that champion was created with that ability. In general, you should expect the node to function as if the champion itself simply had those abilities all along. Because in point of fact, that's how the game works.
So imagine a champion had an ability to immediately passively lock out all power from its opponent, and then grant them a bar of power when they used a special attack. If you were fighting such a champion and you fell under this passive power lock, would you expect ability accuracy reductions you apply to that champion during the fight to affect that initial passive effect that happened at the start of the fight? Probably not. Because ability accuracy reduction can only affect when something triggers, and that passive power lock is already there.
If people think of nodes as some external force that is "constantly affecting" the fight, then that's the wrong mental model. Nodes grant champions abilities, and those abilities are used by the champion as if they had them all along. Matador gives the champion an ability to immediately passively power lock the opponent right at the start of the fight. It doesn't keep "jumping in" and causing power to behave differently than normal. The only thing I would expect would have any chance to affect Matador are ability accuracy reductions that take place *before* the start of the fight. Not even at the start, but before the start. And even then, there would be the question of which came first. But once the fight actually starts, it is too late to do anything about the passive power lock.
In fact, Adrenalin not being ability allows it to do something else that otherwise never happens. Adrenalin can heal you after the fight is over. The combat engine straight up halts all abilities and effects that alter your health bar the moment either champion in a fight dies. However, Adrenalin is not an ability, so the combat engine doesn't halt it at the end of a fight. If you kill something with a special attack, all your healing stops as soon as the defender dies. But Adrenalin keeps working right through the end of the special attack animation.
Since all healing should stop the instant the fight ends, you could argue this is a bugged behavior that just happens to benefit the player (since the computer AI doesn't get Adrenalin). But on a technical level, it makes perfect sense. Adrenalin isn't an ability (or an effect), so it is unaffected by the halting of all healing abilities and effects.
Oddly enough so far I could only repeat this interaction on RtL and only using Domino, so maybe the problem is somewhere there.
Either way, this would be a case where the game doesn't behave as it claims to, so that would be an inconsistency in ability accuracy mechanics that should be looked at. I'll see what I can turn up.
Firstly, you have the video above of Blade gaining power normally on Matador. I'm honestly not sure what's going on in that fight, maybe it's a bug, but it does question your whole idea of Matador power suppression not being an ability.
Secondly, you've brought up this theory of trying to figure out how each node is programmed to figure out if it should have ability accuracy or not. I completely agree with you that best coding practice for Matador would be to have a constant power suppression throughout the fight instead of 'triggering' it every time the attacker would gain power. While this line of reasoning can defend the Matador interaction it doesn't explain others:
Most places in the game where nodes have damage reduction, this is done through protection or weakness. You see this in Ebb and Flow, Overclocked, Split Atom etc. So the consistent way to execute damage reduction in nodes like Pleasure to Burn would also be to have a protection or weakness that is removed when incinerate is applied and triggers again when the incinerate falls off. This is in no way convoluted to program, and would arguably be more efficient than an if statement checking for incinerates every time damage is done. Yet I'm pretty sure this is not the way Pleasure to Burn is programmed since no protection or weakness is shown like other nodes now show, and so the node is not affected by ability accuracy even though the logical implementation of the node has 'triggers' and should have ability accuracy.
Someone else has also raised the example of Safeguard which should be a constant damage cap like in LoL or AoL but instead can be bypassed by AAR.
My point is that the 'triggers' theory you have given and theories given by others like conditional vs fixed explain some interactions but not others. (Safeguard is fixed but has AA and Pleasure to Burn is conditional but does not have AA). This whole issue would be much simpler if Kabam were just transparent in telling us how they decide what has ability accuracy and what does not, instead of us proposing our own theories that we test with trial and error.