Why does Wiccan apply Incinerates to Red Guardin and Spidey 99 when they dex?
DenRod
Member Posts: 43 ★
Very curious to understand how does Wiccan’s ability of applying an incinerate debuff when the opponent’s ability fail due to his neutralize, when the opponent in question is not triggering any buff.
If the answer is “but he would”, then it doesn’t make sense that the entire advantage of being immune to buffs won’t work against a Mystic champion designed to punish buffs.
If the answer is “but he would”, then it doesn’t make sense that the entire advantage of being immune to buffs won’t work against a Mystic champion designed to punish buffs.
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Is this only happening when you dex with a neutralize up or does it occur any other time?
EDIT: just tested it out with RG vs Wiccan and yeah when the dex buff is called out and RG has the neutralise debuff it is saying "buff failed" and incinerating him. Needs looking into.
I made this GIF fighting myself in practice mode; so no nodes involved:
So when you Dex on RG you would gain +1 on his shield. Look at the video of him dexing that attack. The reduced aa caused you not gaining that extra charge. It might be because of this that it is failing?
Since its the weekend, maybe we can bump this post when the mods return for clarification
A champion being buff immune is neither reduced ability accuracy, nor one of Wiccan’s personal abilities. This is black and white, not an opinion.
We can only play by the rules Kabam set, so champions should work by the descriptions given otherwise it’s a bug or a faulty description.
Either more care should be taken with descriptions, or the bug should be fixed.
Red Guardian has a specific (and rare) ability not to gain buffs. It's an active Immunity (not a failure of anything); and should completely bypass Wiccan's Neutralise, which punishes failure to gain buffs by chance. Not just the failure of abilities in general.
Clare Voyant punishes Immunities; and for years, she has punished Red Guardians Buff Immunity by gaining power and clairvoyance charges:
So Red Guardian (a Science champion, btw) is being punished for a successful ability by one Mystic (Clare), and for a failed ability by a different Mystic (Wiccan). Surely one of these is wrong?
But there is no buff to neutralize.
It's same thing if we compare this to
Maschocism, putting a bleed on a bleed immune. Etc
Conflictor: same thing, putting poison on poison immune. Etc
Not commenting on the issue but the way immunity works is by preventing something that would have happened otherwise? So maybe this prevention is causing it to count? But according to wiccans kit it shouldn't ?
edit: RG ability (Ablation) says he's "immune to buffs "- it should mean that any and all verbiage to do with buffs does not apply to him. Same text in SM 2099 abilities. There should be no linguistic workaround that fact.
There’s one of two reasons Buff immune champs get incinerated by Wiccan.
1) It’s just the way that the coding works, because of how Wiccan’s ability is coded into the game and interacts with buff immune champs
2) Kabam have specifically chosen for this to be the interaction and coded it intentionally, because of.. reasons.
If it’s scenario 1, then fair enough, Kabam couldn’t have seen it coming. Scenario 2? That’s not fair enough, this was a silly choice to make since firstly the only 2 immune to buff champions are science and should be able to counter Wiccan. And secondly, if that’s not a good enough reason, it’s not logical.
Solution? Fix it so that it doesn’t happen, because it doesn’t make sense that champions immune to buffs can have a game mechanic where their buffs fail to proc quote “due to reduced ability accuracy”. That is not the literal reason the buff failed.
Think of it as asking a question. Did this champions buff fail? Yes. Did it fail because of Wiccan’s reduced ability accuracy? No, it failed because the champion cannot get buffs.
This is clearly a logical inconsistency. At worst, the description should be made clearer if Kabam are set on making this the interaction they want in the game. Because at the moment, the game is not functioning how the description says. And that is all we can go on to play the game by the rules it sets. When descriptions don’t match gameplay, it’s a bug or an error and either way needs to be fixed.
This isn’t an interaction that makes any sense under the plain wording of the champions’ abilities. If it’s another example of Kabam saying “just ‘cus” (which is wrong in my view), then they should overtly say so, not rely on you to make the point.
Communication. The team should try it some time. It isn’t that difficult or that bad.
Dr. Zola
If they can't gain buffs, why would Neutralise work on them?
How do they interact with Neutralise from other champs that place it?
Neutralize does something very specific. It reduces the ability accuracy of buffs.
Immunity also does something very specific. It blocks effects from happening that otherwise would happen.
Now, when you dex with Red Guardian, the dexterity mastery gives him a 100% chance to gain a buff. When that buff triggers, it should place a buff effect on RG, but RG’s immunity blocks it. However, the buff still *triggered*. That’s important.
Wiccan does not care if a target is immune to buffs or not. He doesn’t care if the buff “wouldn’t have worked anyway”. His ability states if an ability fails *because of reduced ability accuracy* he applies his incinerate. If he neutralizes his opponent, buffs will start to fail to trigger because of reduced AA, and that includes the precision buff from Dexterity.
It doesn’t matter if the target is immune to buffs, nor should it matter. Champs like Red Guardian do not exist in a separate universe where buffs don’t exist. They still exist. Their immunity just blocks them. IF they are triggered in the first place.
Colossus is immune to bleed. That does not mean his ability magically rewrites opponents so their bleed abilities no longer exist. They still exist. They still trigger. And then his immunity block them. Dexterity still exists. It still can trigger buffs on *any* champ with Dexterity. *Some* champs have an immunity to those buffs. Which kicks in *if they trigger*. But immunity doesn’t magically prevent triggering.
I understand some people think immunity to buffs means they can pretend buffs just don’t exist for that champion. But that’s not how the game works, nor how it is described or implied to work. Immunity doesn’t rewrite the laws of physics of the game. Immunity blocks things that actually exist. It prevents them from taking effect. It doesn’t magically change history so they never happened. The game first decides if a buff comes into existence, and then decides if the target is immune to it.
If immunity prevented effects from even triggering, then champs Like Colossus could not gain benefits from his immunities preventing an effect. Because if immunity to bleed meant that all bleed effects just didn’t even attempt to be triggered, they would never exist for his immunity to protect him from.
Same thing happens with Masochism. Masochism has a chance to apply a bleed debuff. It rolls this chance whether the target is bleed immune or not. If it fails, there’s no bleed effect. If it succeeds, there is a bleed effect. If the target is immune to bleed, then that bleed effect which came into existence is then blocked by that immunity.
Think of it like a flow chart
Spidey “whenever a buff is prevented by his immunity he pauses debuffs”
- Spidey 2099 dexes
- did a buff get prevented by his immunity?
If yes, then pause.
However, if he has neutralise on him, then It goes a little different.
- Spidey 2099 dexes
- did a buff get prevented by his immunity?
No, because the buff was actually prevented by the neutralise, he would never have gotten the buff to trigger his immunity. It doesn’t matter that he was immune, because that’s later on in the flow chart
Think of neutralise like a concussion that’s only aimed at buffs. It reduces AAR by 100% but specifically for buffs. How can a buff be prevented by Spidey’s immunity if it never would have triggered?
Imagine if a champion has abilities that triggered from being bled and was immune to bleed, but they had a concussion on them.
Colossus for example, with his armour buffs triggering from being bled. But imagine he had a debuff on him that was “bleed abilities suffer -100% ability accuracy”. If a bleed is applied to him, it reduces the ability accuracy of that bleed so it’s never applied, so how would he be able to proc an armour off that immunity when it hasn’t been applied?
It’s the same logic here, Spidey’s buff is interrupted, for lack of a better word, by the neutralise, meaning it’s never triggered in the first place. Because it’s never triggered, it can never activate his immunity.
The same way the bleed suffers -100% ability accuracy and never triggers colossus’ immunity, Spidey’s buff suffers -100% ability accuracy and never triggers Spidey’s immunity.
I guess what I'm asking is have there been similar instances/interactions in the past that would at the very least show this kind of prioritisation in action, or if it has been coded specifically to counter buff immunity and essentially reduce the effectiveness of these champions.
It seems odd to me, but when asked whether SM2099 is immune to buffs, I suppose the design team would answer “it depends on what the definition of ‘immune’ is.”
I’m now taking a closer look at other champs with similar unique abilities (Guardian, CB) that don’t trigger but “would have” triggered to make sure I’m comfortable with those abilities being amended by technicality before I rank any further.
The game is riddled with cautionary tales of descriptions and interactions (and interpretations thereof) plucked from somewhere down the rabbit hole: Drax and Moleman are just the current bookends, and SM2099 may be in that group as well. Why I or anyone else comes to these forums looking for clarity after nearly 8 years can only be described as derangement—the answers, when they do come, are often as halting and cryptic as the utterances of some fickle Delphic oracle.
Dr. Zola