@Kabam Zibiit can you explain what’s happening here then?
Apparently AAR immunity does not cover specific reductions of immunity. Like EOP crossbones couldn't shrug apocs debuffs, slow works on Force of Will and so on
@Kabam Zibiit can you explain what’s happening here then?
Apparently AAR immunity does not cover specific reductions of immunity. Like EOP crossbones couldn't shrug apocs debuffs, slow works on Force of Will and so on
The wording in Mysterio’s ability is not immunity to AAR, it’s ‘Mysterio’s ability accuracy cannot be reduced’
@Kabam Zibiit can you explain what’s happening here then?
Apparently AAR immunity does not cover specific reductions of immunity. Like EOP crossbones couldn't shrug apocs debuffs, slow works on Force of Will and so on
The wording in Mysterio’s ability is not immunity to AAR, it’s ‘Mysterio’s ability accuracy cannot be reduced’
It is in effect that. An immunity to concussion effects
@Kabam Zibiit can you explain what’s happening here then?
Apparently AAR immunity does not cover specific reductions of immunity. Like EOP crossbones couldn't shrug apocs debuffs, slow works on Force of Will and so on
The wording in Mysterio’s ability is not immunity to AAR, it’s ‘Mysterio’s ability accuracy cannot be reduced’
It is in effect that. An immunity to concussion effects
Then we have a problem. The game shouldn’t function based on “it is in effect”. Wording established to describe a specific ability is important to determine when such ability works and how. “In effect that” throws any conclusive understanding for all abilities out the window
@Kabam Zibiit can you explain what’s happening here then?
Apparently AAR immunity does not cover specific reductions of immunity. Like EOP crossbones couldn't shrug apocs debuffs, slow works on Force of Will and so on
The wording in Mysterio’s ability is not immunity to AAR, it’s ‘Mysterio’s ability accuracy cannot be reduced’
It is in effect that. An immunity to concussion effects
Does that mean that quake doesn’t evade while trying to heavy mysterio?
From what I understand from the explanation, “having a buff” and “gaining a buff” are separate interactions. S99 and Red can’t “have a buff” but they aren’t immune to the “gain” aspect. Like how S99 refreshes Debuffs whenever he would gain a buff, or RG gains shield charges when he would gain a buff. The neutralize is triggering off the “would gain” which is also why his debuff pausing won’t activate while he’s affected by it. I use S99 religiously so I wish the interaction here was different for sure, but to the best of my knowledge that’s kinda what’s going on.
- 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
But why should that be the order of precedence? The abilities of a specific champion are the only constant in any fight in which that champion is used, those abilities should hold water in any situation where similar, extra abilities are competing.
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.
I have been feeling that my recent comments are leaning into what can be classified as conspiratorial, and that is unfortunate.
My guess is that this is simply a design decision to prioritize the “neutralize (Y/N)?” question before the “immune (Y/N)?” question.
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
The logic here is that you cannot be immune to what is not applied.
A rather crude example. But let’s say you are immune to tennis balls. Whenever a tennis ball is thrown at you and hits your face, you lift your arm up and wave.
Normally, someone throws a tennis ball at your face, it hits you and you wave.
But here, someone called Neutralise holds a tennis racket in between the ball and your face.
The ball is thrown at you, it hits the tennis racket and it never hits your face. You never raise your arm and wave, because you never got hit.
The tennis ball is the buff attempted to trigger, the racket is neutralise, you are immune to buffs and you waving your arm is pausing the debuffs.
It’s the same theory here, the buff attempts to be triggered and trigger the immunity, but neutralise stops the buff from ever triggering, so how can it trigger the immunity if it’s never been triggered itself?
I’ll add my diagram in of what I sent you on Line to explain it, because I think it does a good job explaining the logic here.
Here is Spidey dexing normally
Here is when neutralise is applied.
I understand that and agree that’s how it seems to be working.
But I would counter that you shouldn’t be able to neutralize something that never occurs. It appears to be a design decision—whether intended or stumbled upon—and I disagree with the order of operations and the logic underlying it.
Dr. Zola
I think you’re misunderstanding how it works when you say “you shouldn’t be able to neutralise something that never occurs”.
The buff *does* occur, it just triggers an immunity and doesn’t activate on the champion. There’s an important distinction between what you’re saying “a buff immune champion never has buffs occurring” and what actually happens which is “a buff immune champion has buffs occurring, but they don’t actually stay on the character because they’re immune”
Like how when you use wolverine and apply a bleed to colossus, the bleed does occur but it triggers an immunity. If it never occurred, how would you get an immune call out?
It’s exactly what Cat said. “‘having a buff’ and ‘gaining a buff’ are separate interactions.”
Colossus can be subject to the “gaining a bleed debuff”, at which point he is immune to it so his immunity triggers. He is not subject to having a bleed debuff which is why it doesn’t ever get put on him.
“Prevent” is the operative term in SM99 description. What does the word mean if not “stop from occurring”?
Dr. Zola
Exactly what you think it means. But how does Spidey’s immunity prevent a buff that never got triggered?
How does a buff get neutralized if it was prevented from triggering in the first place?
We can go around and around here. The design team decided to shoehorn neutralize into the split second a hypothetical buff doesn’t happen. It is what it is.
I was part joking with @Cat_Murdock earlier, but the answer turns out to be as simple as “just ‘cus.”
Dr. Zola
I think the thing here is that you’re arguing here for what it *should* be in your opinion. And I’m arguing for what it actually is.
This is the way it’s turned out with how the game is coded, there are thousands of interactions in the game that could have gone either way and this game is what we’ve ended up with.
Why should it be the way you prefer? Both ways make equally logical sense, but you just prefer it your way. I get that, and from a player perspective I would prefer that too as a Spidey user. But unfortunately that’s not a good enough reason for how the game to work. There’s plenty of things I would prefer in the game, doesn’t make them illogical.
I’m not arguing “it should be this” or “it should be that”. You’re arguing that it’s illogical to be one way, but I strongly disagree.
Not exactly. You’re arguing for how it shows up in game, which is akin to the Moleman fracas. Either words mean something or they don’t, but if they don’t then don’t even release champ descriptions and just let us play with them to figure out how they work.
Your Colossus example: his immunity “protects” him from bleeds. Not same as “prevents.” Team should stop playing fast and loose with the way things are worded.
Dr. Zola
There's a difference between colloquialisms and actual descriptions. "Neutralize" has an in-game description. Neutralize doesn't "neutralize" things in some arbitrary colloquial way we can browse the dictionary to figure out. Neutralize explicitly is stated to be an effect that "decreases buff ability accuracy." That's what neutralize does.
So whatever you think "neutralize" should do based on Websters, it actually does that. As you say, words should mean something, and when the game provides an actual mechanical description of what an effect does, that description should be the operative one unless there's a specific reason to suspect it is in error. There's no reason to believe the description of neutralize is erroneous, so Neutralize does not act upon buffs that are there, Neutralize prevents buffs from triggering by lowering their ability accuracy.
The question was asked: why should neutralize have priority over immunity, or alternatively why should neutralize be checked before immunity? And the answer is, because of what neutralize does, it *must* be checked first. Immunity only applies to effects that are attempted. But ability accuracy determines if the attempt is made. There is no other way for those two things to resolve themselves. First the attempt must be made, and then second the attempt must be blocked by immunity if it exists. Immunity cannot proactively block things that haven't been attempted yet.
I recognize that some people have staked the opposite position either because they disagree or because they feel the situation is ambiguous and thus should be resolved in a favorable manner. However, the situation is not ambiguous, and isn't even arbitrary. As long as we understand immunity to block attempts and ability accuracy to decide when attempts are made, it is all but impossible to do it in any other order. It just is.
So the interaction between Wiccan and these champs is working correctly. ...Red Guardian and Spidey 2099's Buff immunity only comes into play when an attempt to apply a Buff would otherwise succeed, at which point the immunity prevents the Buff. But Neutralize prevents the attempt from working in the first place, so there's nothing for the Buff immunity to prevent by the time it could trigger...
With respect Zibiit, and I thoroughly appreciate the rapid feedback: that answer is right up there with Bill Clinton explaining:
Neutralise is an ability possessed (to date) entirely by Mystic champions
Buff Immunity is an ability possessed (to date) entirely by Science champions.
Whilst your explanation is, I'm sure, technically correct, is it desirable? Was it really the intention of the designers of the Neutralise ability, that it would work in direct opposition to the class wheel? Or is it in fact an unintended consequence of the way Neutralise is coded?
Might it be worth the design team discussing the fact that, from the players perspective, this interaction actively 'trips up' players who are making what they thought were very rational choices to deal with an opponent? Most of whom, as you know, aren't active in the forums?
Players: Hey this new opponent punishes you for trying to a buff... I know, I'll use a champion who doesn't gain any...
Kabam Devs: (Twirls moustache) Mwah hah hah hah hah! Did you believe the champion description, without reading the source code? You Fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders!...
Seriously: could the team please talk this through some time, and consider if Neutralise is worth changing?
Players: Hey this new opponent punishes you for trying to a buff... I know, I'll use a champion who doesn't gain any...
Kabam Devs: (Twirls moustache) Mwah hah hah hah hah! Did you believe the champion description, without reading the source code? You Fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders!...
Seriously: could the team please talk this through some time, and consider if Neutralise is worth changing?
This is a severe mischaracterization. It even borderline contradicts the in-game text.
Wiccan does not punish you for "trying" to get a buff. Wiccan punishes your attacker if any ability attempts and fails to do something. That's what "when an opponent's ability fails due to reduced ability accuracy" means.
SM2099 is immune to buffs. Does that mean he has no abilities that attempt to place buffs on him? That's not the same thing. If the player has Dexterity, then SM2099 does have an ability that attempts to place buffs on him. Those buffs just fail.
"Did you believe the champion description, without reading the source code?" There is no need to understand the technical implementation. Knowing it only makes it easier to explain. But the plain text of the descriptions, absent any other knowledge, is enough to resolve this issue. Wiccan punishes attempts by abilities to produce buffs if they fail. If the player has Dexterity and is using SM2099, dioes SM2099 have an ability that attempts to place buffs on him? Yes. Can that ability fail because of reduced ability accuracy? Yes. That's it.
You need know nothing else. Everything else appears to be what people want to happen, based on what they think the purpose of things are. But that's completely invented and not actually stated or implied anywhere in the game. People think SM2099's buff immunity is "supposed" to make him basically impervious to all attempts to manipulate buffs in any way. But that's not what immunity does.
Also, whilst we're discussing Neutralise: it's always described as acting by reducing Ability Accuracy:
Well, several champions are meant to be immune to Ability Accuracy modification. Their abilities state that their Ability Accuracy can't be reduced: Mysterio Archangel Old Man Logan
And, predictably, whilst a player might have thought Wiccan's Neutralise would be a harmless source of Willpower for them, it seems to work on them normally. Is it supposed to?
Again, a casual player might well try to bypass Wiccan using one of the above champions; meeting the same results as trying to use Red Guardian or Spidey 2099, above.
By way of contrast, another Mystic ability, Soul Imprisonment also works by reducing Buff Ability Accuracy. As you can see, OML's Immunity to AAR works just fine against Mephisto's Soul Imprisonment:
So... Is it worth taking a look at Neutralise? And making a few pro-player adjustments to how it works? Or working on the description, at the very least.?
Players: Hey this new opponent punishes you for trying to a buff... I know, I'll use a champion who doesn't gain any...
Kabam Devs: (Twirls moustache) Mwah hah hah hah hah! Did you believe the champion description, without reading the source code? You Fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders!...
Seriously: could the team please talk this through some time, and consider if Neutralise is worth changing?
This is a severe mischaracterization. It even borderline contradicts the in-game text.
Wiccan does not punish you for "trying" to get a buff. Wiccan punishes your attacker if any ability attempts and fails to do something. That's what "when an opponent's ability fails due to reduced ability accuracy" means.
SM2099 is immune to buffs. Does that mean he has no abilities that attempt to place buffs on him? That's not the same thing. If the player has Dexterity, then SM2099 does have an ability that attempts to place buffs on him. Those buffs just fail.
"Did you believe the champion description, without reading the source code?" There is no need to understand the technical implementation. Knowing it only makes it easier to explain. But the plain text of the descriptions, absent any other knowledge, is enough to resolve this issue. Wiccan punishes attempts by abilities to produce buffs if they fail. If the player has Dexterity and is using SM2099, dioes SM2099 have an ability that attempts to place buffs on him? Yes. Can that ability fail because of reduced ability accuracy? Yes. That's it.
You need know nothing else. Everything else appears to be what people want to happen, based on what they think the purpose of things are. But that's completely invented and not actually stated or implied anywhere in the game. People think SM2099's buff immunity is "supposed" to make him basically impervious to all attempts to manipulate buffs in any way. But that's not what immunity does.
Why are those champs whose ability accuracy cannot be reduced taking incinerate damage?
Well, several champions are meant to be immune to Ability Accuracy modification. Their abilities state that their Ability Accuracy can't be reduced: Mysterio Archangel Old Man Logan
And, predictably, whilst a player might have thought Wiccan's Neutralise would be a harmless source of Willpower for them, it seems to work on them normally. Is it supposed to?
This one is definitely worth reviewing. If Neutralize works the way it is described to work, it should not work in these situations. If we presume the description is correct, and that presumption is necessary for declaring that Neutrlize works as it is intended to work in situations where the target is buff immune, it should fail in situations where the target is immune to ability accuracy modification.
Conversely, I should add, if Neutralize is not working as described, there's no longer direct support for the notion that it is working correctly in the case of buff immune champs. The sole support for the idea it is working correctly in those situations is the in-game description of Neutralize. If that description is wrong, all bets are off everywhere.
Also, whilst we're discussing Neutralise: it's always described as acting by reducing Ability Accuracy:
Well, several champions are meant to be immune to Ability Accuracy modification. Their abilities state that their Ability Accuracy can't be reduced: Mysterio Archangel Old Man Logan
And, predictably, whilst a player might have thought Wiccan's Neutralise would be a harmless source of Willpower for them, it seems to work on them normally. Is it supposed to?
Again, a casual player might well try to bypass Wiccan using one of the above champions; meeting the same results as trying to use Red Guardian or Spidey 2099, above.
By way of contrast, another Mystic ability, Soul Imprisonment also works by reducing Buff Ability Accuracy. As you can see, OML's Immunity to AAR works just fine against Mephisto's Soul Imprisonment:
So... Is it worth taking a look at Neutralise? And making a few pro-player adjustments to how it works? Or working on the description, at the very least.?
Also, whilst we're discussing Neutralise: it's always described as acting by reducing Ability Accuracy:
Well, several champions are meant to be immune to Ability Accuracy modification. Their abilities state that their Ability Accuracy can't be reduced: Mysterio Archangel Old Man Logan
And, predictably, whilst a player might have thought Wiccan's Neutralise would be a harmless source of Willpower for them, it seems to work on them normally. Is it supposed to?
Again, a casual player might well try to bypass Wiccan using one of the above champions; meeting the same results as trying to use Red Guardian or Spidey 2099, above.
By way of contrast, another Mystic ability, Soul Imprisonment also works by reducing Buff Ability Accuracy. As you can see, OML's Immunity to AAR works just fine against Mephisto's Soul Imprisonment:
So... Is it worth taking a look at Neutralise? And making a few pro-player adjustments to how it works? Or working on the description, at the very least.?
Ok this is what I don’t get, why does pro player only ever mean “what is pro player right now in this one situation”
If you changed neutralise to not work against immunity to AAR, you’re making Tigra, Rintrah and Wiccan not work against mysterio, old man Logan, archangel, force of will etc. How is that pro player? At the moment, neutralise works against force of will. Your pro player move would change that.
You’d also have to change Apoc’s reduction in tenacity, which is a reduction to shrug off ability accuracy. Do you think it’s a pro player move to make immune to AAR champs no longer be countered by Apoc? No more masochism counter against any champ immune to AAR. Can’t think of many pro player situations Apoc no longer working there would create.
You’ll get a lot of players thinking that’s a pretty anti-player move right there. Just so you don’t have 2 champions that it doesn’t work in favour of?
For what it’s worth, my interpretation of this has always been that you have to imagine that Ability Accuracy is a separate thing to buff ability accuracy, and instead it’s something called Base Ability Accuracy (I made up that name)
Imagine stat 1 and stat 2 respectively for base ability accuracy and buff ability accuracy .
Neutralise reduces stat 2 but not stat 1. So when neutralise is active, stat 2 decreases and they don’t get buffs anymore. When a champion is on force of will node or immune to AAR they are immune to alterations in stat 1. But neutralise only affects stat 2.
It’s the same for Apoc with his reduction in shrug off. That’s a separate stat too, stat 3. So when he faced a champ with immunity to AAR, he reduces stat 3 so they can’t shrug. But that champ is only immune to stat 1 reductions, which is normal base ability accuracy.
The only slight problem with this theory is increases to Ability accuracy nodes or champions. When you try to use Apoc or neutralise against a champion with increased Abiltiy accuracy they don’t work. Buffs can get through, debuffs can be shrugged off.
That’s why that annoying agent venom boss a few months ago could shrug off Apoc. His ability accuracy was increased
However, my theory is that in this case, increased ability accuracy affects all 3 stats. It increases chance to proc buffs, it increases chance to shrug off and it increases base ability accuracy too.
So that’s why “increase to ability accuracy” nodes should stay the same, ability accuracy as a concept should actually be called base ability accuracy. And that explains why neutralise/ Apoc works against immune to AAR, but not against increased ability accuracy.
Another consideration are Rhulk and Stryfe In the beginning Rhulk's abilities were being bypassed by AA if you use sp2 or 3 allowing you to place neuros on him. They changed that so his pseudo-immunities would work correctly. Apoc's purify AAR was also messing with it He gained the callout "immune"
Stryfe in the beginning did not have the call out "immune" when blocking unblockable attacks. I don't if there was an instance of that ability failing due to AAR but he later got the callout to better reflect how his abilities work.
I know these are different situations but it shows that the team has previously changed things to make immunities work like the players expect them to as opposed to "descriptions"
There's alsos Mags who reduces damage from shock passives despite his abilities specifically saying "debuffs" or Surfer and Corvus who do the same as well.
For what it’s worth, my interpretation of this has always been that you have to imagine that Ability Accuracy is a separate thing to buff ability accuracy, and instead it’s something called Base Ability Accuracy (I made up that name)
It most definitely is. What we normally refer to as just "ability accuracy" is actually a champion stat. We just don't usually see it, and it is usually 100%. If you have an ability that has a 10% ability accuracy to trigger something, the true chance for that thing to trigger is the ability's ability accuracy multiplied by the champion's ability accuracy. So usually that's just 100% x whatever, and you get whatever. But when you lower a champion's ability accuracy, it is this champion stat that is being lowered. When you reduce it by 20% and it becomes 80%, you then have 80% x whatever. If the ability itself had 10% ability accuracy, the true chance is 80% x 10% = 8%.
Buff ability accuracy is a modifier specific to buffs. But the presumption has generally been that immune to ability accuracy reduction means immunity to all ability accuracy reductions. However, it if only means immunity to champion ability accuracy reduction and not immunity to all ability accuracy reductions, then that should be explicitly stated.
Ability accuracy has always been a little sketchy. Ironically, this particular situation under discussion is one of the few cases where an unusual circumstance is actually working as you would expect it to work given the mechanical descriptions. There are a lot of weird corner cases where things don't work as described, for (currently) unknown reasons. For example, Falcon can suppress Mordo's astral evade. On paper, that should not work, but we all know it does.
For what it’s worth, my interpretation of this has always been that you have to imagine that Ability Accuracy is a separate thing to buff ability accuracy, and instead it’s something called Base Ability Accuracy (I made up that name)
It most definitely is. What we normally refer to as just "ability accuracy" is actually a champion stat. We just don't usually see it, and it is usually 100%. If you have an ability that has a 10% ability accuracy to trigger something, the true chance for that thing to trigger is the ability's ability accuracy multiplied by the champion's ability accuracy. So usually that's just 100% x whatever, and you get whatever. But when you lower a champion's ability accuracy, it is this champion stat that is being lowered. When you reduce it by 20% and it becomes 80%, you then have 80% x whatever. If the ability itself had 10% ability accuracy, the true chance is 80% x 10% = 8%.
Buff ability accuracy is a modifier specific to buffs. But the presumption has generally been that immune to ability accuracy reduction means immunity to all ability accuracy reductions. However, it if only means immunity to champion ability accuracy reduction and not immunity to all ability accuracy reductions, then that should be explicitly stated.
Ability accuracy has always been a little sketchy. Ironically, this particular situation under discussion is one of the few cases where an unusual circumstance is actually working as you would expect it to work given the mechanical descriptions. There are a lot of weird corner cases where things don't work as described, for (currently) unknown reasons. For example, Falcon can suppress Mordo's astral evade. On paper, that should not work, but we all know it does.
Exactly my interpretation.
The easiest solution here where you assume all interactions are working as intended, is to rename ability accuracy so that it’s ‘Base Ability Accuracy’, immunity to AAR should be renamed ‘Immunity to Base Ability Accuracy Reduction’ otherwise we’re gonna see Tigra, Rintrah, Apoc and Wiccan get a rather large hit to their uses. Or, their pro player uses.
Players: Hey this new opponent punishes you for trying to a buff... I know, I'll use a champion who doesn't gain any...
Kabam Devs: (Twirls moustache) Mwah hah hah hah hah! Did you believe the champion description, without reading the source code? You Fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders!...
Seriously: could the team please talk this through some time, and consider if Neutralise is worth changing?
This is a severe mischaracterization. It even borderline contradicts the in-game text.
Wiccan does not punish you for "trying" to get a buff. Wiccan punishes your attacker if any ability attempts and fails to do something.
I think you missed the point where this was intended as a (hopefully amusing) characterisation of the thought processes of the typical or casual player.
You're neither of those things.
Neither am I, and nor are most of the rest of us on the forums.
Yes, you're technically correct, and Wiccan will be a pain on Disorient nodes, and interesting to use in Assassin's range. But his only intrinsic ability to reduce ability accuracy is through inflicting Neutralise, which only affects buff ability accuracy. That's clearly the mechanism that most people will focus on when interpreting his abilities. You're being disingenuous to suggest otherwise.
There is no need to understand the technical implementation... the plain text of the descriptions, absent any other knowledge, is enough to resolve this issue...
You're welcome to the perspective that the text is nice and clear. But (and I'd like to be clear: I say this with every respect for the voice of reason and experience that you bring to the forums), is it not possible that the sheer extent of your gaming experience and your professional understanding of game design gives you a significantly biased perspective in this area?
We're on page three of this discussion. I would humbly suggest that the preceding 40 or 50 comments by fairly experienced players suggests that this interaction with Neutralise is not clear, and is going to be misunderstood by the vast majority of players who try to deal with opponents like Wiccan and Rintrah.
So the interaction between Wiccan and these champs is working correctly. Some folks in here were correct in their explanations, but I just wanted to clarify things. Red Guardian and Spidey 2099's Buff immunity only comes into play when an attempt to apply a Buff would otherwise succeed, at which point the immunity prevents the Buff. But Neutralize prevents the attempt from working in the first place, so there's nothing for the Buff immunity to prevent by the time it could trigger.
Wiccan applies an Incinerate when an "opponent's ability fails due to reduced Ability Accuracy". Since Neutralize reduces ability accuracy and causes the ability (Dex) to fail before the immunity can trigger, the Incinerate is applied. Hope that helps to clarify this interaction a bit.
There is nothing to clarify, reg guardian and spidey 2099 are made to deal with annoying mystics. Just change order of events, immunity should prevent buff very first. Every immunity should work like that.
@Magrailothos i will absolutely agree with you that it would be worth clearing up this misconception in the descriptions.
I’m not sure exactly what should be changed, whether that’s Spidey’s buff immunity description, or neutralise description, but anything that makes complicated interactions clearer and less likely to crop up on the forum with someone complaining why their Falcon didn’t work on enhanced ability accuracy nodes, or why Wiccan stopped them pausing debuffs is a win in my book.
Initially, it does not seem logical that this is the case and I understand why people are confused (you can see my version of being confused about this at the start of the thread). But when you realise the workings behind it it starts to make sense. However, it should be clear on the surface reading, so I think a change of description should help.
For what it’s worth, my interpretation of this has always been that you have to imagine that Ability Accuracy is a separate thing to buff ability accuracy, and instead it’s something called Base Ability Accuracy (I made up that name)
It most definitely is. What we normally refer to as just "ability accuracy" is actually a champion stat. We just don't usually see it, and it is usually 100%. If you have an ability that has a 10% ability accuracy to trigger something, the true chance for that thing to trigger is the ability's ability accuracy multiplied by the champion's ability accuracy. So usually that's just 100% x whatever, and you get whatever. But when you lower a champion's ability accuracy, it is this champion stat that is being lowered. When you reduce it by 20% and it becomes 80%, you then have 80% x whatever. If the ability itself had 10% ability accuracy, the true chance is 80% x 10% = 8%.
Buff ability accuracy is a modifier specific to buffs. But the presumption has generally been that immune to ability accuracy reduction means immunity to all ability accuracy reductions. However, it if only means immunity to champion ability accuracy reduction and not immunity to all ability accuracy reductions, then that should be explicitly stated.
Ability accuracy has always been a little sketchy. Ironically, this particular situation under discussion is one of the few cases where an unusual circumstance is actually working as you would expect it to work given the mechanical descriptions. There are a lot of weird corner cases where things don't work as described, for (currently) unknown reasons. For example, Falcon can suppress Mordo's astral evade. On paper, that should not work, but we all know it does.
Exactly my interpretation.
The easiest solution here where you assume all interactions are working as intended, is to rename ability accuracy so that it’s ‘Base Ability Accuracy’, immunity to AAR should be renamed ‘Immunity to Base Ability Accuracy Reduction’ otherwise we’re gonna see Tigra, Rintrah, Apoc and Wiccan get a rather large hit to their uses. Or, their pro player uses.
Again, the wording in Mysterio’s abilities is not immunity to AAR, it’s “Mysterio’s ability accuracy can’t be decreased”. No mention whatsoever about immunity. So, is Mysterio’s ability accuracy being decreased by the neutralize debuff?
Having multiple stats or stat names without any sort of clarification whatsoever makes us Yolo and learn on the fly.
Why does tigra work on force of will or against AA immune champs? Why does apoc bypass aa immune tenacity? Why is neutralize working on AA immune nodes? I know @BitterSteel theorized but unless a Kabam employee/mod confirms it, it is what it is, a thoery. We need clarification on this sort of stuff, there are so many weird interactions that make no sense in this regard. Everytime a new interaction pops up and we are left scratching our heads as to how it would work with a plethora of other interactions already in game.
For what it’s worth, my interpretation of this has always been that you have to imagine that Ability Accuracy is a separate thing to buff ability accuracy, and instead it’s something called Base Ability Accuracy (I made up that name)
It most definitely is. What we normally refer to as just "ability accuracy" is actually a champion stat. We just don't usually see it, and it is usually 100%. If you have an ability that has a 10% ability accuracy to trigger something, the true chance for that thing to trigger is the ability's ability accuracy multiplied by the champion's ability accuracy. So usually that's just 100% x whatever, and you get whatever. But when you lower a champion's ability accuracy, it is this champion stat that is being lowered. When you reduce it by 20% and it becomes 80%, you then have 80% x whatever. If the ability itself had 10% ability accuracy, the true chance is 80% x 10% = 8%.
Buff ability accuracy is a modifier specific to buffs. But the presumption has generally been that immune to ability accuracy reduction means immunity to all ability accuracy reductions. However, it if only means immunity to champion ability accuracy reduction and not immunity to all ability accuracy reductions, then that should be explicitly stated.
Ability accuracy has always been a little sketchy. Ironically, this particular situation under discussion is one of the few cases where an unusual circumstance is actually working as you would expect it to work given the mechanical descriptions. There are a lot of weird corner cases where things don't work as described, for (currently) unknown reasons. For example, Falcon can suppress Mordo's astral evade. On paper, that should not work, but we all know it does.
Exactly my interpretation.
The easiest solution here where you assume all interactions are working as intended, is to rename ability accuracy so that it’s ‘Base Ability Accuracy’, immunity to AAR should be renamed ‘Immunity to Base Ability Accuracy Reduction’ otherwise we’re gonna see Tigra, Rintrah, Apoc and Wiccan get a rather large hit to their uses. Or, their pro player uses.
Again, the wording in Mysterio’s abilities is not immunity to AAR, it’s “Mysterio’s ability accuracy can’t be decreased”. No mention whatsoever about immunity. So, is Mysterio’s ability accuracy being decreased by the neutralize debuff?
I mean, when you try and reduce mysterio’s with a concussion ability accuracy it says immune. I think it’s just a case of the descriptions not being clear and in reality he is actually just immune to AAR.
The way that fits into my theory is that “ability accuracy cannot be decreased” is referring to what I think is stat 1, or base ability accuracy. So that aspect cannot be decreased, but his buff ability accuracy can be decreased. Because ability accuracy is not the same as buff ability accuracy.
Having multiple stats or stat names without any sort of clarification whatsoever makes us Yolo and learn on the fly.
Why does tigra work on force of will or against AA immune champs? Why does apoc bypass aa immune tenacity? Why is neutralize working on AA immune nodes? I know @BitterSteel theorized but unless a Kabam employee/mod confirms it, it is what it is, a thoery. We need clarification on this sort of stuff, there are so many weird interactions that make no sense in this regard. Everytime a new interaction pops up and we are left scratching our heads as to how it would work with a plethora of other interactions already in game.
Yeah I agree, Kabam really need to work on their communication on this. @Kabam Zibiit kindly clarified on the Wiccan interaction. It would be great if he could clarify on the other interactions discussed here too.
So the interaction between Wiccan and these champs is working correctly. Some folks in here were correct in their explanations, but I just wanted to clarify things. Red Guardian and Spidey 2099's Buff immunity only comes into play when an attempt to apply a Buff would otherwise succeed, at which point the immunity prevents the Buff. But Neutralize prevents the attempt from working in the first place, so there's nothing for the Buff immunity to prevent by the time it could trigger.
Wiccan applies an Incinerate when an "opponent's ability fails due to reduced Ability Accuracy". Since Neutralize reduces ability accuracy and causes the ability (Dex) to fail before the immunity can trigger, the Incinerate is applied. Hope that helps to clarify this interaction a bit.
There is nothing to clarify, reg guardian and spidey 2099 are made to deal with annoying mystics. Just change order of events, immunity should prevent buff very first. Every immunity should work like that.
If you change how the game processes ability accuracy and immunity, you will break every champ that has an ability that says something like "if an immunity prevents an effect, gain X benefit." Because immunity will no longer be blocking any effects. Instead, the effects will simply not fire if immunity is present.
And no, we can't count that as "prevented by immunity." If the game simply decides not to even check ability accuracy when immunity is present, and you count that as immunity prevention, then that would mean when something with a 5% chance to proc a bleed attacks Colossus, Colossus will gain armor on *every* attack, because we have no idea whether that attack would have proced a bleed or not. We never checked. So Colossus gets the benefit every attack, or never.
The order of operation is not arbitrary. We check to see if the effect materializes first, then check if immunity protects the target, because if we do it the other way, all failures get credited to immunity, whether the effect was even supposed to happen or not. But that's not what immunity is supposed to do, and counting it that way breaks other things elsewhere in a way practically impossible to fix without extremely fragile and complex mechanical exception rules.
There is no need to understand the technical implementation... the plain text of the descriptions, absent any other knowledge, is enough to resolve this issue...
You're welcome to the perspective that the text is nice and clear. But (and I'd like to be clear: I say this with every respect for the voice of reason and experience that you bring to the forums), is it not possible that the sheer extent of your gaming experience and your professional understanding of game design gives you a significantly biased perspective in this area?
We're on page three of this discussion. I would humbly suggest that the preceding 40 or 50 comments by fairly experienced players suggests that this interaction with Neutralise is not clear, and is going to be misunderstood by the vast majority of players who try to deal with opponents like Wiccan and Rintrah.
Very few experienced players are arguing mechanics. They are arguing intent. They want it work in a particular way, because they believe their interpretation of global intent should override mechanics. But I don't see experienced veteran players actually confused.
These things are not in dispute.
1. When the player has the Dexterity mastery, all of their champs possess an ability that will trigger a buff when dexterity itself is triggered.
2. Champs like SM2099 are immune to buffs that are attempted to be placed upon them.
3. Wiccan punishes attempts to place buffs that fail (due to AAR).
What people are arguing is yes, that happens, but it *shouldn't* happen because I'm supposed to be able to stomp on mystic champs with SM2099. Or they are arguing the slightly more technical "neutralize shouldn't cause buffs to fail that wouldn't have worked in the first place." But that's not confusion. That's arguing the mechanics aren't going my way.
For what it’s worth, my interpretation of this has always been that you have to imagine that Ability Accuracy is a separate thing to buff ability accuracy, and instead it’s something called Base Ability Accuracy (I made up that name)
It most definitely is. What we normally refer to as just "ability accuracy" is actually a champion stat. We just don't usually see it, and it is usually 100%. If you have an ability that has a 10% ability accuracy to trigger something, the true chance for that thing to trigger is the ability's ability accuracy multiplied by the champion's ability accuracy. So usually that's just 100% x whatever, and you get whatever. But when you lower a champion's ability accuracy, it is this champion stat that is being lowered. When you reduce it by 20% and it becomes 80%, you then have 80% x whatever. If the ability itself had 10% ability accuracy, the true chance is 80% x 10% = 8%.
Buff ability accuracy is a modifier specific to buffs. But the presumption has generally been that immune to ability accuracy reduction means immunity to all ability accuracy reductions. However, it if only means immunity to champion ability accuracy reduction and not immunity to all ability accuracy reductions, then that should be explicitly stated.
Ability accuracy has always been a little sketchy. Ironically, this particular situation under discussion is one of the few cases where an unusual circumstance is actually working as you would expect it to work given the mechanical descriptions. There are a lot of weird corner cases where things don't work as described, for (currently) unknown reasons. For example, Falcon can suppress Mordo's astral evade. On paper, that should not work, but we all know it does.
Exactly my interpretation.
The easiest solution here where you assume all interactions are working as intended, is to rename ability accuracy so that it’s ‘Base Ability Accuracy’, immunity to AAR should be renamed ‘Immunity to Base Ability Accuracy Reduction’ otherwise we’re gonna see Tigra, Rintrah, Apoc and Wiccan get a rather large hit to their uses. Or, their pro player uses.
Again, the wording in Mysterio’s abilities is not immunity to AAR, it’s “Mysterio’s ability accuracy can’t be decreased”. No mention whatsoever about immunity. So, is Mysterio’s ability accuracy being decreased by the neutralize debuff?
I mean, when you try and reduce mysterio’s with a concussion ability accuracy it says immune. I think it’s just a case of the descriptions not being clear and in reality he is actually just immune to AAR.
The way that fits into my theory is that “ability accuracy cannot be decreased” is referring to what I think is stat 1, or base ability accuracy. So that aspect cannot be decreased, but his buff ability accuracy can be decreased. Because ability accuracy is not the same as buff ability accuracy.
That makes zero sense. How can Kabam hope to explain that “ability accuracy is not the same as buff ability accuracy”? Do we a different layer of functionality in every ability accuracy for each game interaction? What about debuff ability accuracy? Passive ability accuracy? Contact ability accuracy? Which one can’t ever be decreased in Mysterio’s case?
For what it’s worth, my interpretation of this has always been that you have to imagine that Ability Accuracy is a separate thing to buff ability accuracy, and instead it’s something called Base Ability Accuracy (I made up that name)
It most definitely is. What we normally refer to as just "ability accuracy" is actually a champion stat. We just don't usually see it, and it is usually 100%. If you have an ability that has a 10% ability accuracy to trigger something, the true chance for that thing to trigger is the ability's ability accuracy multiplied by the champion's ability accuracy. So usually that's just 100% x whatever, and you get whatever. But when you lower a champion's ability accuracy, it is this champion stat that is being lowered. When you reduce it by 20% and it becomes 80%, you then have 80% x whatever. If the ability itself had 10% ability accuracy, the true chance is 80% x 10% = 8%.
Buff ability accuracy is a modifier specific to buffs. But the presumption has generally been that immune to ability accuracy reduction means immunity to all ability accuracy reductions. However, it if only means immunity to champion ability accuracy reduction and not immunity to all ability accuracy reductions, then that should be explicitly stated.
Ability accuracy has always been a little sketchy. Ironically, this particular situation under discussion is one of the few cases where an unusual circumstance is actually working as you would expect it to work given the mechanical descriptions. There are a lot of weird corner cases where things don't work as described, for (currently) unknown reasons. For example, Falcon can suppress Mordo's astral evade. On paper, that should not work, but we all know it does.
Exactly my interpretation.
The easiest solution here where you assume all interactions are working as intended, is to rename ability accuracy so that it’s ‘Base Ability Accuracy’, immunity to AAR should be renamed ‘Immunity to Base Ability Accuracy Reduction’ otherwise we’re gonna see Tigra, Rintrah, Apoc and Wiccan get a rather large hit to their uses. Or, their pro player uses.
Either that, or make all abilities that confer ability accuracy modification immunity affect all such modifications. Although I suspect that can't happen for technical reasons (it may prevent them from making special content that bypasses normal immunities for specific design reasons if they eliminate all escape hatches from any ability that says "this always happens with no exceptions ever.")
For what it’s worth, my interpretation of this has always been that you have to imagine that Ability Accuracy is a separate thing to buff ability accuracy, and instead it’s something called Base Ability Accuracy (I made up that name)
It most definitely is. What we normally refer to as just "ability accuracy" is actually a champion stat. We just don't usually see it, and it is usually 100%. If you have an ability that has a 10% ability accuracy to trigger something, the true chance for that thing to trigger is the ability's ability accuracy multiplied by the champion's ability accuracy. So usually that's just 100% x whatever, and you get whatever. But when you lower a champion's ability accuracy, it is this champion stat that is being lowered. When you reduce it by 20% and it becomes 80%, you then have 80% x whatever. If the ability itself had 10% ability accuracy, the true chance is 80% x 10% = 8%.
Buff ability accuracy is a modifier specific to buffs. But the presumption has generally been that immune to ability accuracy reduction means immunity to all ability accuracy reductions. However, it if only means immunity to champion ability accuracy reduction and not immunity to all ability accuracy reductions, then that should be explicitly stated.
Ability accuracy has always been a little sketchy. Ironically, this particular situation under discussion is one of the few cases where an unusual circumstance is actually working as you would expect it to work given the mechanical descriptions. There are a lot of weird corner cases where things don't work as described, for (currently) unknown reasons. For example, Falcon can suppress Mordo's astral evade. On paper, that should not work, but we all know it does.
Exactly my interpretation.
The easiest solution here where you assume all interactions are working as intended, is to rename ability accuracy so that it’s ‘Base Ability Accuracy’, immunity to AAR should be renamed ‘Immunity to Base Ability Accuracy Reduction’ otherwise we’re gonna see Tigra, Rintrah, Apoc and Wiccan get a rather large hit to their uses. Or, their pro player uses.
Either that, or make all abilities that confer ability accuracy modification immunity affect all such modifications. Although I suspect that can't happen for technical reasons (it may prevent them from making special content that bypasses normal immunities for specific design reasons if they eliminate all escape hatches from any ability that says "this always happens with no exceptions ever.")
Unless it’s written “immune” in a champion’s info page, the ability in question shouldn’t function the way you are describing immunity should. As I wrote twice already, Mysterio’s ability is not an immunity, instead his ability accuracy cannot be decreased. Period.
For what it’s worth, my interpretation of this has always been that you have to imagine that Ability Accuracy is a separate thing to buff ability accuracy, and instead it’s something called Base Ability Accuracy (I made up that name)
It most definitely is. What we normally refer to as just "ability accuracy" is actually a champion stat. We just don't usually see it, and it is usually 100%. If you have an ability that has a 10% ability accuracy to trigger something, the true chance for that thing to trigger is the ability's ability accuracy multiplied by the champion's ability accuracy. So usually that's just 100% x whatever, and you get whatever. But when you lower a champion's ability accuracy, it is this champion stat that is being lowered. When you reduce it by 20% and it becomes 80%, you then have 80% x whatever. If the ability itself had 10% ability accuracy, the true chance is 80% x 10% = 8%.
Buff ability accuracy is a modifier specific to buffs. But the presumption has generally been that immune to ability accuracy reduction means immunity to all ability accuracy reductions. However, it if only means immunity to champion ability accuracy reduction and not immunity to all ability accuracy reductions, then that should be explicitly stated.
Ability accuracy has always been a little sketchy. Ironically, this particular situation under discussion is one of the few cases where an unusual circumstance is actually working as you would expect it to work given the mechanical descriptions. There are a lot of weird corner cases where things don't work as described, for (currently) unknown reasons. For example, Falcon can suppress Mordo's astral evade. On paper, that should not work, but we all know it does.
Exactly my interpretation.
The easiest solution here where you assume all interactions are working as intended, is to rename ability accuracy so that it’s ‘Base Ability Accuracy’, immunity to AAR should be renamed ‘Immunity to Base Ability Accuracy Reduction’ otherwise we’re gonna see Tigra, Rintrah, Apoc and Wiccan get a rather large hit to their uses. Or, their pro player uses.
Again, the wording in Mysterio’s abilities is not immunity to AAR, it’s “Mysterio’s ability accuracy can’t be decreased”. No mention whatsoever about immunity. So, is Mysterio’s ability accuracy being decreased by the neutralize debuff?
I mean, when you try and reduce mysterio’s with a concussion ability accuracy it says immune. I think it’s just a case of the descriptions not being clear and in reality he is actually just immune to AAR.
The way that fits into my theory is that “ability accuracy cannot be decreased” is referring to what I think is stat 1, or base ability accuracy. So that aspect cannot be decreased, but his buff ability accuracy can be decreased. Because ability accuracy is not the same as buff ability accuracy.
That makes zero sense. How can Kabam hope to explain that “ability accuracy is not the same as buff ability accuracy”? Do we a different layer of functionality in every ability accuracy for each game interaction? What about debuff ability accuracy? Passive ability accuracy? Contact ability accuracy? Which one can’t ever be decreased in Mysterio’s case?
Makes perfect sense in my view. How can Kabam hope to explain that ability accuracy is not the same as buff ability accuracy? I mean, you just did it right there. It's a pretty simple concept. If you can point to any such thing as debuff ability accuracy, passive, contact etc, then I'll address them. Until then, they clearly don't exist.
Again, if you want Mysterio to be immune to buff ability accuracy reduction you have to accept that Apoc will no longer be able to stop Immune to AAR champions shrug off, Tigra will no longer be able to work on Force of Will, Rintrah, Wiccan and everyone else in future with neutralise will no longer be able to work in all these places. Is that worth ripping up how the game works? Is that a pro player move?
Or is it not easier to just accept that there are several different stats, Base Ability Accuracy, Buff ability accuracy and shrug off ability accuracy, and that some champions affect one of them, some affect all of them and some are immune to one of them.
Comments
So whatever you think "neutralize" should do based on Websters, it actually does that. As you say, words should mean something, and when the game provides an actual mechanical description of what an effect does, that description should be the operative one unless there's a specific reason to suspect it is in error. There's no reason to believe the description of neutralize is erroneous, so Neutralize does not act upon buffs that are there, Neutralize prevents buffs from triggering by lowering their ability accuracy.
The question was asked: why should neutralize have priority over immunity, or alternatively why should neutralize be checked before immunity? And the answer is, because of what neutralize does, it *must* be checked first. Immunity only applies to effects that are attempted. But ability accuracy determines if the attempt is made. There is no other way for those two things to resolve themselves. First the attempt must be made, and then second the attempt must be blocked by immunity if it exists. Immunity cannot proactively block things that haven't been attempted yet.
I recognize that some people have staked the opposite position either because they disagree or because they feel the situation is ambiguous and thus should be resolved in a favorable manner. However, the situation is not ambiguous, and isn't even arbitrary. As long as we understand immunity to block attempts and ability accuracy to decide when attempts are made, it is all but impossible to do it in any other order. It just is.
Neutralise is an ability possessed (to date) entirely by Mystic champions
Buff Immunity is an ability possessed (to date) entirely by Science champions.
Whilst your explanation is, I'm sure, technically correct, is it desirable? Was it really the intention of the designers of the Neutralise ability, that it would work in direct opposition to the class wheel? Or is it in fact an unintended consequence of the way Neutralise is coded?
Might it be worth the design team discussing the fact that, from the players perspective, this interaction actively 'trips up' players who are making what they thought were very rational choices to deal with an opponent? Most of whom, as you know, aren't active in the forums?
Players: Hey this new opponent punishes you for trying to a buff... I know, I'll use a champion who doesn't gain any...
Kabam Devs: (Twirls moustache) Mwah hah hah hah hah! Did you believe the champion description, without reading the source code? You Fool! You fell victim to one of the classic blunders!...
Seriously: could the team please talk this through some time, and consider if Neutralise is worth changing?
Wiccan does not punish you for "trying" to get a buff. Wiccan punishes your attacker if any ability attempts and fails to do something. That's what "when an opponent's ability fails due to reduced ability accuracy" means.
SM2099 is immune to buffs. Does that mean he has no abilities that attempt to place buffs on him? That's not the same thing. If the player has Dexterity, then SM2099 does have an ability that attempts to place buffs on him. Those buffs just fail.
"Did you believe the champion description, without reading the source code?" There is no need to understand the technical implementation. Knowing it only makes it easier to explain. But the plain text of the descriptions, absent any other knowledge, is enough to resolve this issue. Wiccan punishes attempts by abilities to produce buffs if they fail. If the player has Dexterity and is using SM2099, dioes SM2099 have an ability that attempts to place buffs on him? Yes. Can that ability fail because of reduced ability accuracy? Yes. That's it.
You need know nothing else. Everything else appears to be what people want to happen, based on what they think the purpose of things are. But that's completely invented and not actually stated or implied anywhere in the game. People think SM2099's buff immunity is "supposed" to make him basically impervious to all attempts to manipulate buffs in any way. But that's not what immunity does.
it's always described as acting by reducing Ability Accuracy:
Well, several champions are meant to be immune to Ability Accuracy modification. Their abilities state that their Ability Accuracy can't be reduced:
Mysterio
Archangel
Old Man Logan
And, predictably, whilst a player might have thought Wiccan's Neutralise would be a harmless source of Willpower for them, it seems to work on them normally. Is it supposed to?
Again, a casual player might well try to bypass Wiccan using one of the above champions; meeting the same results as trying to use Red Guardian or Spidey 2099, above.
By way of contrast, another Mystic ability, Soul Imprisonment also works by reducing Buff Ability Accuracy. As you can see, OML's Immunity to AAR works just fine against Mephisto's Soul Imprisonment:
So... Is it worth taking a look at Neutralise? And making a few pro-player adjustments to how it works? Or working on the description, at the very least.?
If you changed neutralise to not work against immunity to AAR, you’re making Tigra, Rintrah and Wiccan not work against mysterio, old man Logan, archangel, force of will etc. How is that pro player? At the moment, neutralise works against force of will. Your pro player move would change that.
You’d also have to change Apoc’s reduction in tenacity, which is a reduction to shrug off ability accuracy. Do you think it’s a pro player move to make immune to AAR champs no longer be countered by Apoc? No more masochism counter against any champ immune to AAR. Can’t think of many pro player situations Apoc no longer working there would create.
You’ll get a lot of players thinking that’s a pretty anti-player move right there. Just so you don’t have 2 champions that it doesn’t work in favour of?
For what it’s worth, my interpretation of this has always been that you have to imagine that Ability Accuracy is a separate thing to buff ability accuracy, and instead it’s something called Base Ability Accuracy (I made up that name)
Imagine stat 1 and stat 2 respectively for base ability accuracy and buff ability accuracy .
Neutralise reduces stat 2 but not stat 1. So when neutralise is active, stat 2 decreases and they don’t get buffs anymore. When a champion is on force of will node or immune to AAR they are immune to alterations in stat 1. But neutralise only affects stat 2.
It’s the same for Apoc with his reduction in shrug off. That’s a separate stat too, stat 3. So when he faced a champ with immunity to AAR, he reduces stat 3 so they can’t shrug. But that champ is only immune to stat 1 reductions, which is normal base ability accuracy.
The only slight problem with this theory is increases to Ability accuracy nodes or champions. When you try to use Apoc or neutralise against a champion with increased Abiltiy accuracy they don’t work. Buffs can get through, debuffs can be shrugged off.
That’s why that annoying agent venom boss a few months ago could shrug off Apoc. His ability accuracy was increased
However, my theory is that in this case, increased ability accuracy affects all 3 stats. It increases chance to proc buffs, it increases chance to shrug off and it increases base ability accuracy too.
So that’s why “increase to ability accuracy” nodes should stay the same, ability accuracy as a concept should actually be called base ability accuracy. And that explains why neutralise/ Apoc works against immune to AAR, but not against increased ability accuracy.
In the beginning Rhulk's abilities were being bypassed by AA if you use sp2 or 3 allowing you to place neuros on him. They changed that so his pseudo-immunities would work correctly. Apoc's purify AAR was also messing with it He gained the callout "immune"
Stryfe in the beginning did not have the call out "immune" when blocking unblockable attacks. I don't if there was an instance of that ability failing due to AAR but he later got the callout to better reflect how his abilities work.
I know these are different situations but it shows that the team has previously changed things to make immunities work like the players expect them to as opposed to "descriptions"
There's alsos Mags who reduces damage from shock passives despite his abilities specifically saying "debuffs" or Surfer and Corvus who do the same as well.
Buff ability accuracy is a modifier specific to buffs. But the presumption has generally been that immune to ability accuracy reduction means immunity to all ability accuracy reductions. However, it if only means immunity to champion ability accuracy reduction and not immunity to all ability accuracy reductions, then that should be explicitly stated.
Ability accuracy has always been a little sketchy. Ironically, this particular situation under discussion is one of the few cases where an unusual circumstance is actually working as you would expect it to work given the mechanical descriptions. There are a lot of weird corner cases where things don't work as described, for (currently) unknown reasons. For example, Falcon can suppress Mordo's astral evade. On paper, that should not work, but we all know it does.
The easiest solution here where you assume all interactions are working as intended, is to rename ability accuracy so that it’s ‘Base Ability Accuracy’, immunity to AAR should be renamed ‘Immunity to Base Ability Accuracy Reduction’ otherwise we’re gonna see Tigra, Rintrah, Apoc and Wiccan get a rather large hit to their uses. Or, their pro player uses.
You're neither of those things.
Neither am I, and nor are most of the rest of us on the forums.
Yes, you're technically correct, and Wiccan will be a pain on Disorient nodes, and interesting to use in Assassin's range. But his only intrinsic ability to reduce ability accuracy is through inflicting Neutralise, which only affects buff ability accuracy. That's clearly the mechanism that most people will focus on when interpreting his abilities. You're being disingenuous to suggest otherwise. You're welcome to the perspective that the text is nice and clear. But (and I'd like to be clear: I say this with every respect for the voice of reason and experience that you bring to the forums), is it not possible that the sheer extent of your gaming experience and your professional understanding of game design gives you a significantly biased perspective in this area?
We're on page three of this discussion. I would humbly suggest that the preceding 40 or 50 comments by fairly experienced players suggests that this interaction with Neutralise is not clear, and is going to be misunderstood by the vast majority of players who try to deal with opponents like Wiccan and Rintrah.
I’m not sure exactly what should be changed, whether that’s Spidey’s buff immunity description, or neutralise description, but anything that makes complicated interactions clearer and less likely to crop up on the forum with someone complaining why their Falcon didn’t work on enhanced ability accuracy nodes, or why Wiccan stopped them pausing debuffs is a win in my book.
Initially, it does not seem logical that this is the case and I understand why people are confused (you can see my version of being confused about this at the start of the thread). But when you realise the workings behind it it starts to make sense. However, it should be clear on the surface reading, so I think a change of description should help.
Again, the wording in Mysterio’s abilities is not immunity to AAR, it’s “Mysterio’s ability accuracy can’t be decreased”. No mention whatsoever about immunity. So, is Mysterio’s ability accuracy being decreased by the neutralize debuff?
Why does tigra work on force of will or against AA immune champs? Why does apoc bypass aa immune tenacity? Why is neutralize working on AA immune nodes?
I know @BitterSteel theorized but unless a Kabam employee/mod confirms it, it is what it is, a thoery. We need clarification on this sort of stuff, there are so many weird interactions that make no sense in this regard. Everytime a new interaction pops up and we are left scratching our heads as to how it would work with a plethora of other interactions already in game.
The way that fits into my theory is that “ability accuracy cannot be decreased” is referring to what I think is stat 1, or base ability accuracy. So that aspect cannot be decreased, but his buff ability accuracy can be decreased. Because ability accuracy is not the same as buff ability accuracy.
And no, we can't count that as "prevented by immunity." If the game simply decides not to even check ability accuracy when immunity is present, and you count that as immunity prevention, then that would mean when something with a 5% chance to proc a bleed attacks Colossus, Colossus will gain armor on *every* attack, because we have no idea whether that attack would have proced a bleed or not. We never checked. So Colossus gets the benefit every attack, or never.
The order of operation is not arbitrary. We check to see if the effect materializes first, then check if immunity protects the target, because if we do it the other way, all failures get credited to immunity, whether the effect was even supposed to happen or not. But that's not what immunity is supposed to do, and counting it that way breaks other things elsewhere in a way practically impossible to fix without extremely fragile and complex mechanical exception rules.
These things are not in dispute.
1. When the player has the Dexterity mastery, all of their champs possess an ability that will trigger a buff when dexterity itself is triggered.
2. Champs like SM2099 are immune to buffs that are attempted to be placed upon them.
3. Wiccan punishes attempts to place buffs that fail (due to AAR).
What people are arguing is yes, that happens, but it *shouldn't* happen because I'm supposed to be able to stomp on mystic champs with SM2099. Or they are arguing the slightly more technical "neutralize shouldn't cause buffs to fail that wouldn't have worked in the first place." But that's not confusion. That's arguing the mechanics aren't going my way.
Again, if you want Mysterio to be immune to buff ability accuracy reduction you have to accept that Apoc will no longer be able to stop Immune to AAR champions shrug off, Tigra will no longer be able to work on Force of Will, Rintrah, Wiccan and everyone else in future with neutralise will no longer be able to work in all these places. Is that worth ripping up how the game works? Is that a pro player move?
Or is it not easier to just accept that there are several different stats, Base Ability Accuracy, Buff ability accuracy and shrug off ability accuracy, and that some champions affect one of them, some affect all of them and some are immune to one of them.