Requesting clarification on various Resistance/Penetration effects
Chaos_Spark
Member Posts: 7 ★
I have many questions regarding how various forms of Resistances and Penetration effects interact with each other, so to go through them one at a time:
- 1: Are Block Penetration and Armor Penetration effects subtractive (That is, calculating the amount of damage reduced by Armor/Blocking would be [Champion's Armor Rating/Block Proficiency - opponent's Armor/Block Penetration = Total damage reduction from Armor/Blocking]), or are they multiplicative based on some other factor?
- 2: Block/Armor Penetration effects cannot reduce the opponent's Block Proficiency/Armor Rating into the negatives like Armor Break can, right?
- 3: True Strike/True Damage effects don't ignore Critical Resistance, do they?
- 4: Critical Resistance isn't able to reduce the chance of/prevent Guaranteed Critical Hits from triggering, is it?
- 5: Does Critical Penetration refer to the amount of damage that Critical Hits do that ignores Armor and Resistances (for example, the Pure Skill and Pierce Masteries, and Shang-Chi's Way of the Spider Synergy), or does it refer to something else?
- 6: All Champions' Critical Hits naturally ignore some amount of the opponent's Armor and Resistances. Is this due to all Champions having an innate Critical Penetration value, or is this a quirk of how Critical Hit damage is calculated against Armor and Resistances?
- 7: If all Champions do have an innate Critical Penetration value, what is that value? For example, Absorbing Man's abilities state that he has a flat -20% Critical Penetration, so what would a normal Champion's Critical Penetration value be?
- 8: Does Maestro's Energy Penetration passive allow all of his Energy Damage effects (including his S1 Energy Damage bursts and his Cosmic Radiation damage) to ignore a percentage of the opponent's Energy Resistance, or does it only apply to the damage dealt by Energy attacks themselves? Additionally, does the effect of Energy Penetration also apply while hitting into the opponent's Block, or if Maestro's attacks do not connect with the opponent?
- 9: Some Champions have innate Block Penetration values that are in the negatives (e.g. Cassie Lang, Ironheart, and Longshot), although the percentages given for their Block Penetration are set to 0%. Does this mean that:
A) These Champions' attacks deal less damage when hitting into the opponent's Block;
These Champions' attacks are not affected when hitting into the opponent's Block, but effects that increase their Block Penetration when hitting into the opponent's Block must first exceed this negative value before it can ignore Block Proficiency; or
C) These Champions are not different in any way than a Champion with 0 Block Penetration?
If these questions are phrased poorly, tell me and I'll try to clarify. Any answers would be appreciated.
- 1: Are Block Penetration and Armor Penetration effects subtractive (That is, calculating the amount of damage reduced by Armor/Blocking would be [Champion's Armor Rating/Block Proficiency - opponent's Armor/Block Penetration = Total damage reduction from Armor/Blocking]), or are they multiplicative based on some other factor?
- 2: Block/Armor Penetration effects cannot reduce the opponent's Block Proficiency/Armor Rating into the negatives like Armor Break can, right?
- 3: True Strike/True Damage effects don't ignore Critical Resistance, do they?
- 4: Critical Resistance isn't able to reduce the chance of/prevent Guaranteed Critical Hits from triggering, is it?
- 5: Does Critical Penetration refer to the amount of damage that Critical Hits do that ignores Armor and Resistances (for example, the Pure Skill and Pierce Masteries, and Shang-Chi's Way of the Spider Synergy), or does it refer to something else?
- 6: All Champions' Critical Hits naturally ignore some amount of the opponent's Armor and Resistances. Is this due to all Champions having an innate Critical Penetration value, or is this a quirk of how Critical Hit damage is calculated against Armor and Resistances?
- 7: If all Champions do have an innate Critical Penetration value, what is that value? For example, Absorbing Man's abilities state that he has a flat -20% Critical Penetration, so what would a normal Champion's Critical Penetration value be?
- 8: Does Maestro's Energy Penetration passive allow all of his Energy Damage effects (including his S1 Energy Damage bursts and his Cosmic Radiation damage) to ignore a percentage of the opponent's Energy Resistance, or does it only apply to the damage dealt by Energy attacks themselves? Additionally, does the effect of Energy Penetration also apply while hitting into the opponent's Block, or if Maestro's attacks do not connect with the opponent?
- 9: Some Champions have innate Block Penetration values that are in the negatives (e.g. Cassie Lang, Ironheart, and Longshot), although the percentages given for their Block Penetration are set to 0%. Does this mean that:
A) These Champions' attacks deal less damage when hitting into the opponent's Block;
These Champions' attacks are not affected when hitting into the opponent's Block, but effects that increase their Block Penetration when hitting into the opponent's Block must first exceed this negative value before it can ignore Block Proficiency; orC) These Champions are not different in any way than a Champion with 0 Block Penetration?
If these questions are phrased poorly, tell me and I'll try to clarify. Any answers would be appreciated.
2
Comments
2. I *believe* penetration stats are not capped to zero, meaning they can make those effects negative. However, I’m not 100% certain about that, as this might have changed when they changed the mechanics of how negative armor works a while back.
3. True strike and true damage affect how much damage you do. Critical resistance determines *if* you Crit. These are completely different things, so they don’t interact. It’s not so much that TS and TD ignore crit resistance, it’s that crit resistance doesn’t directly affect damage. This is like asking if Evade chance ignores Bleed immunity, if you get my meaning.
4. If a crit is designated as a guaranteed hit, it does not “roll dice” to see if it crits, and critical resistance is basically a dice roll modifier. So no amount of critical resistance will affect a guaranteed crit. However, keep in mind “guaranteed crit” is not the same thing as “100% chance to crit.” Critical resistance can reduce the chance of a crit from 100% to something lower. But it cannot ordinarily affect something that has a guaranteed crit, and thus there is no “chance” involved.
5. I’ll refer you to the dev description of critical penetration from Absorbing Man’s spotlight:
6. This is a bit of a technical implementation question. Historically, critical hits ignoring armor and resistances has always been seen as something intrinsic to critical hits themselves. However, Absorbing Man’s critical penetration stat suggests it might have been an invisible champion stat all along. Or it was a stat that was added to the game to allow the devs to manipulate this. There’s honestly no way to know without looking at the implementation directly, as there would be no in-game test you could perform to determine this. It would look the same either way.
7. Once upon a time, critical hits ignored the first 20% of armor and resistances. That was pre-12.0. Post 12.0 it seems those mechanics have changed to account for how flat stats work: see the description of Absorbing Man above.
8. Off the top of my head, I do not know. According to the description, his energy penetration should affect attacks, so it should only affect damage from his attacks, not from other sources. However, I have not tested this directly. If it affected damage outside of attacks, it would arguably be a bug (either in the effect or the description).
9. I don’t know why the in-game stat calculator shows 0% for champions with negative block penetration stat. It might be some funkiness with the calculator, or it might be trying to say something about block penetration values below zero. I believe the answer to your question is A, the champion deals less damage when hitting into block due to the way penetration stats work in general. However, I haven’t tested this myself specifically.
edit: just tested it again, and yes ghost's guaranteed crits can in fact still fail against doom.
But neither are affected by the Dulled Node(-50% crit
chance per buff ). Sometime ago a dev(or mod) had said that Ghost has 100% crit rate while Corvus has 200% crit rate.
@DNA3000 , @Magrailothos
Interestingly, the only way you can observe this is by playing with champions that don't actually land critical hits 😃
Dr Doom has a critical resistance of 1212
With a Summoner running Greater Precision...
Guardian has a critical rating of 1197
Sam Wilson has a critical rating of 1108
Prowler has a critical rating of 1263
It should be essentially impossible for Sam or Guardian to register a critical hit against Doom; and hardly ever happen for Prowler.
But it's easy to see, in Practice mode, that Guardian has no trouble at all inflicting Shocks (you see loads of Immune callouts using both him, and iDoom); whilst Prowler and Sam have no trouble inflicting Ruptures. Their damage is completely unimpaired by Doom's critical resistance; although in Sam's case I use the word 'damage' a little generously.
Presumably the explanation for this is an 'order of action' thing - The game engine determines the hit has happened, then uses critical rating to determine whether or not it would* be critical, then looks for critical resistance and/or defender abilities that prevent Crits, such as Glancing.
However at the point * the game notices that Sam/Guardian/Prowler would crit; and applies their abilities that trigger when they would crit. Even though later calculations regarding Critical Resistance would have prevented it.
At least that's what makes sense to me as an explanation; as it's quite reminiscent of the explanation for Wiccan inflicting Incinerate when a buff-immune champion would gain a buff; because the attempt to gain a buff is checked before the subsequent buff immunity is checked.
The only thing I can see that undermines this is getting the same trick with Crossbones: he can't build Furies against Doom. I don't know why this is; although it's perhaps not coincidence that he's the oldest (#2016) non-critical champion there is: possibly he uses different coding for the *would* ability to pick up on hits that would be critical?
Anyway, those are a few observations for you to think on; I'd love to hear your interpretation...