**Mastery Loadouts**
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
We have not set an end-date for the new period, but we will update this banner when we have more information.
Due to issues related to the release of Mastery Loadouts, the "free swap" period will be extended.
We have not set an end-date for the new period, but we will update this banner when we have more information.
Comments
I don’t think the line between passive effect, passive debuff, and passive buff is as fine as you make it seem. But I will concede the fact that Kabam doesn’t make it easily distinguishable so I can see why there might be confusion. In the end I’m honestly a bit disappointed and confused why IMIW’s armor doesn’t interact with plasma charges but Iceman’s does. That honestly confuses me a lot.
*To expand on what I recall of Zibiit, passive=effect, active=buff
Still doesn’t make sense to me. But I guess that’s the Kabam way 🤷🏻♂️
I would just stop thinking of buff as a verb and start thinking of like a noun when it comes to icons/abiliites.
Limbo is neither a buff nor a debuff *nor* an effect. Limbo is an ability. That ability contains a damage over time effect (even this is a simplification but good enough here) and a *trigger* that produces a heal effect.
In this game, like in many games that are similar, there is a hierarchy of these things. In MCOC there are abilities and effects. The relationship between an ability and an effect is similar to that between a missile and a warhead. Abilities are like missiles. Effects are like warheads. Limbo is a missile that contains a DoT warhead and a heal "warhead" that has a delayed fuse.
When abilities contain only a single effect, the ability and the effect are sometimes synonymized for simplicity. But that simplification sometimes comes at the expense of players not fully understanding what's really happening in the game.
Can’t learn something that isn’t consistent. My brain is wired to think of armor ups as buffs. Making it passive doesn’t stop it from being a buff. Doesn’t make sense.
I understand your belief in the older descriptions, but don't confuse our forum terminology with that of the game itself. The game language has long been unclear about what active and passive and buff really mean. Things like Loa and Toxic armour don't help.
But things change - do you remember long ago Kabam talked about active evades vs passive evades? Before it became apparent that 'active evades' actually meant 'use of Dexterity'?
@DNA3000 is dead right on this, as I've tried convincing you in threads well before this one. Buffs and debuffs can both be passive or active.
Civil Warrior's Armour Ups
Rhinos Unstoppable
Punisher's Indestructible
Old Man Logan's Regeneration
All these effect are clearly passive, and are clearly beneficial buffs that can't be nullified any more than the passive buffs you get from the Oscillate node.
Don't reply to this response: I'll provide photo evidence in the next comment, so that this one isn't over-long!
Will this do?
@will-o-wisp Look, Civil has two ordinary armour buffs:
I hit SP1 and see what happens:
Look, he's got both passive and active buffs!
Look, there's more of them!
@will-o-wisp, are you convinced yet? They really are passive buffs. It says so right in his description. They last forever; and absolutely cannot be nullified, broken or stolen. As well as giving him ability accuracy reduction against every offensive ability there is. (Seriously, why does no-one else realise how cool Civil Warrior is? Just because his damage is meh?)
Passive buffs are an actual thing.
And whilst Civil Warrior isn't awesome, he's definitely better than people really realise. 😀
But that screenshot is interesting, I will admit. Is an error in the text itself and not in the ability.
Source: https://forums.playcontestofchampions.com/en/discussion/1718/version-13-1-discussion-thread/p1
"New Ability (Armor Up Conversion): When launching a Special Attack, Civil Warrior converts two armor up buffs into one permanent Armor Up passive effect (Maximum of 5 Stacks)."
DS armor up doesn’t work against havok... it’s an active armor up buff... why doesn’t it work then?
Indeed they are passive abilities that "buff" the champion. But they are not BUFFS in the game, and dont interact like buffs.
Rhino's unstoppable is the same unstoppable that Ghulk has, and the same it is on the Labyrinth enrage node. The way they function or trigger may be different, but all of them are unstoppable passive abilities. It doesn't need to have an icon on any of these, unless it's something that helps or it's necessary to be visualized.
Nullify abilities that nullify buffs, don't say anything about "active buffs" only. Buffet and masoquism same thing. A lot more of abilities that interact with buffs and debuffs say nothing about "active buffs" or "passive buffs" only. If they only say "buffs", then that's enough of information
I really don't think @will-o-wisp is thinking about or talking about the game itself, he is talking about his mental model of the game that the text descriptions of abilities and effects (often, but not always) is trying to paint. I can understand that: it is at least not crazy. But I don't think he realizes or acknowledges the difference between describing what the game actually does and what the game tries to convince players it is doing.
The problem is that colloquial descriptions can mask what's going on and get hung up on the semantics of how something is described, which is why I believe what actually happens should be the basis for all descriptions of game effects. Does Voodoo's SP2 debuff the target? Colloquially, no, it doesn't. But mechanically, it does, and knowing that explains the old problem with debuff immune targets. It promotes a better understanding of how the game functions in odd corner cases, and how certain kinds of bugs can arise. It can also arbitrate when the game is silent or ambiguous.
There's also a "grape-nuts" problem. In other words, "grape-nuts" are neither grapes nor nuts, they are "grape-nuts." Technically, this game has buffs and debuffs (as in: the game calls them this internally within the data itself that the content creators actually compose) and there are "passive buffs" and "passive debuffs" (there are also other types). Notice that the other kind of buff isn't "active buff" it is "buff." That means there are buffs, and there are passive buffs. That would be confusing to a human, but the game doesn't care.
We call the thing the game internally calls buffs "active buffs" to distinguish them from passive buffs because otherwise it would be confusing to human English speakers. This also bleeds into the game terminology so that when something claims to "affect buffs" it isn't easy to know if the human who wrote it meant "active buffs" and was using the internal game term ("buff") or meant all buffs but honoring the passive special rules, or wasn't aware of the technicalities at all and just wrote down something they thought was unambiguous.
One of the many reasons why I want to work towards better and more complete descriptions of what the game actually does, so we all know that when we use simplifications that they actually are simplifications just for convenience, and when in doubt we can still resort to first principles of the true reality of the game, and not get hung up on the simplified descriptions of the game.
You just quoted Kabam Zibiit saying that Dhorne61 is correct when he states that IMIW's armor up is a passive buff.
He goes on to say that Medusa prevents active armor buffs, but according to @will-o-wisp there is no such thing as an active armor buff, that's just player-invented language. So I don't believe this supports the notion that passive effects cannot be buffs to the degree you believe it does.
Ok so I did a bit of digging around and really trying to read abilities. For the most part you’re right. Per Sabretooth, Thing, and Sentinel they have passives, or passive effects.
But here’s where it gets really confusing:
It says under IMIW’s molecular armor “active Armor passive”. I am willing to concede that for the most part all their passives do in fact say “effect” and not “buff” but you have to concede their wording is annoying and confusing.
Wording often is confusing, but here's something to consider. When a champion ability says it "inflicts bleed" is it confusing if another champion claims to be bleed immune? You don't believe "inflicts bleed" is confusing just because that statement is modified by something else in the game that explains that some things are immune to bleed, correct?
So when something says "nullifies buffs" or is otherwise affected by buffs, that isn't necessarily confusing if you're told that "passives" obey a different set of rules, and are immune to and from many of those effects. Isn't that the same thing?
Given that, while thinking "passive != buff" resolves many inconsistencies in the descriptions, I would argue this set of rules resolves more inconsistencies, including the one you point out above:
1. The phrase "passive effect" refers to all types of passive effects in general, whether they are buffs, debuffs, or neither.
2. Passive effects are normally immune to nullify and are invisible to most powers that either scale with buffs or are affected by buff triggers.
In this case, what is an "active Armor Passive?" In context, this is an Armor Passive Buff: the word active means it actually is on the champion. In other words, this phrase is synonymous with "Armor Passive buff stack" as in "Critical Resistance increases for each Armor Passive buff stack." I don't believe it is meant to be interpreted to be "active" as in the opposite of "passive" - no matter who you believe in terms of the language, that wouldn't make sense in any context.
Read Zibiit’s reply. “Active Buffs, like Medusa's Fury Buffs, can be distinguished by the ring around their icon, but Passive Effects, like Molecular Armor, do not have those.”
@Viper1987 Yes initally confusing and complicated; and in the case of CW’s in game description mislabled. However I’m missing “active armor passive” I’m not seeing that phrase.
I’m honestly not trying to pick on everything but Kabam’s language makes things far more complicated than it needs to be. Consistency in language and terminology makes things much smoother and avoids miscommunications. No matter how you interpret it, “active Armor passive” is still clunky and borderline contradictory.
@CoatHang3r it’s the last sentence of the first section under his Molecular Armor.
I did read it, and I agree with it. Active Buffs are one thing, and can be distinguished by the ring around their icon. Passive effects are something completely different from Active Buffs, and have different icons. Absolutely nothing I've said anywhere contradicts that statement.
However, *I* say that Active Buffs are a thing, and Passive Buffs are also a thing. @will-o-wisp explicitly states that neither Active Buffs nor Passive Buffs are a thing, that calling buffs "active" and "passive" are player terminology invented by players to distinguish the two. According to @will-o-wisp, and he's been very clear about this, there are Buffs, there are Debuffs, and there are Passive Effects. And all passive effects are the same: there is no distinction between what we might call passive buffs and passive debuffs. According to @will-o-wisp, that distinction only exists in players' minds.
Zibiit calls Molecular Armor a passive effect. I agree: it is a passive effect. I would also say it is a passive buff. Zibiit doesn't contradict that. He agrees with that. It is possible he was deliberately trying not to be disagreeable as you say, but if you take that position you can't use anything he said to be definitively disproving anything.
I can see why it's condusing there.
The word "active" there doesn't mean the opposite of "passive". Instead is just saying "for each passive armor activated".
In other words, the ability could be: "The chance to trigger is reduced by each Armor Passive already activated".
You can also see in the same screenshot that he has abilities that interact with "Armor effects". This means any armor up, whether it's a buff or a passive. So if he gets an armor up buff from any source (synergy, nodes, boosts), it will still interact with his abilities. But only with the one's that interact with "effects" and not only his passive armors
I think almost everyone would agree it is clunky and self-contradictory on the surface. That's true regardless of what you believe "passive" means in the context of abilities. I'm simply stating that regardless of what you believe "passive" means, it is equally clunky, and it is equally capable of being replaced with more straight forward language. It doesn't illuminate the notion of what "passive" means as a result. It is just weird.
Just so we're clear, you say "Armor effects" refers to "any Armor Up." Where did the "up" come from? If IMIW gets an armor bonus from a synergy, is that an "Armor effect" as you define the term? If not, why not?
I was able to understand their intention with that phrase, but I simply bring it up because it adds confusion. They are really bad at clarifying terminology and interactions.
I think about it like based on other example.
A champion can trigger a bleed debuff on the opponent. There is a synergy in the game that allows this champion (don't remember who) to replace his bleed debuffs for passive bleeds.
Now let's pick some bleed immune champions. These champions are immune to "bleed effects", meaning both debuffs and passive bleeds.
On the other side, Corvus Glaive is immune to the damage of bleed debuffs, while his glaive charges are on. But he isn't immune to passive bleeds, and therefore he takes full damage from them, with or without glaive charges.
Some abilities of IW IM will interact with both armor buffs and passives. So nodes that gives him armor buffs (explosive personality) are included here.
The term "armor up" that I used is what was is usually described on champions abilities, and are usually what can appear visible under the HP bar.
You’re thinking of Goldpool (and AV I think.) I didn’t realize that was a thing. That with that synergy it bypasses Corvus’ pseudo immunity.
Well I guess this is starting to come together a little bit. I still don’t agree with their terminology and interactions but at least I can start to look for this more. So if there were also passive Coldsnap and shock effects, it would damage him too because they’re effects and not debuffs?
I don't believe this answers my question. I asked, since you mention synergies, and since you inserted an extra word into your description, if you believe armor bonus synergies are "armor effects." IMIW mentions "armor effects." Are armor bonuses from synergies an armor effect? You seemed to imply that you consider them to be, but I wasn't certain that's what you intended to say.
When I gave the synergies example, I was thinking of any unique synergie that could appear in the future, that might give him a new way to get armor ups during the fight.
The current synergies that increase armor only add a number to his already existence base armor. Every champion has a base armor rating (even if it's 0) , and these sinergies increase that armor rating. It's different from an armor up "charge" that is visible on the fight.
Exactly. Passives shocks can be found in the Ultron boss on Variant 3.3, and Corvus takes full damage from them
I feel we're sliding away from the topic at hand here @V1PER1987; but Corvus also takes full damage from Nightcrawler's Deep Wounds; which inflict bleed damage but no debuff.