There’s a better and easier way to deal with this: different icons stack, same icons replace each other.
That’s not only true for buff and debuff, it’s also true for damage per round.
I find your different attack division confusing and unnecessary. Basically you have only 2 types of attacks/skills: Normal tile damage (in raid opponents will do a variation of this one, the AI’s rounds mechanic) and Special skill and attack damage.
The main difference is: Normal tile damage is done by matching tiles (or rounds in AI side of it) and generates mana. Special skill and attack damage do not generate mana, instead require 100% mana that will be consumed after activation of it.
Normal and Special attack will be influenced by everything, unless stated otherwise. Special attacks won’t take into consideration the strong/weak mechanic of colors, UNLESS stated. As this moment the only two are Hel (special does extra damage to Holy) and Athena (special does extra damage to Fire).
Ghosting is not a type of attack, it’s a condition of missing or not hitting an attack.
Misses are due a lost of accuracy/precision. Every hero has 100% precision by default. It only happens to attacks and not buff, debuffs, heals, dispel, so only affect the damage side of it. If your special is half damage, half debuff/buff, the debuff/buff will still be applied regardless of misses. Example, when Hel misses, all 3 heroes still get the silence, same goes for Gormek debuff defense. Attacks that hit all opponents or attack with splash damage either miss all or hit all.
When there’s no target (ghosting), that lost attack is fully converted to mana and it actually give a higher percent of mana than it would have if you hit something. When you miss against a target, that miss won’t generate mana to neither player or oponent, it also won’t work against the weak spot on titans.
When you hit tiles on a spot shared by two targets, your damage is divided by 2 and both receive same damage and mana. (Just adding.)
Once again I find the list very confusing and repetitive. Special skills effect, you have 5 types:
- Buff and debuffs that affect the card status of your hero. Such as more/less attack, defense, accuracy, HP and critical chance. At this moment only troops affect critical and HP. The value can be a fixed amount or vary depending on the mechanic, it can also only apply to a color or attack type.
- HP modifiers. More HP aka heals, less HP aka damage and damage per round (that works as a debuff). Damage comes in 3 types: damage to all targets, to a single target and splash damage (full damage to the target and half of that amount to all enemies exactly at its sides, usually 2 more, but it can be 4). It affects the HP but it’s limited by the max HP stated in the hero card. This is not a status change (the max HP is the same), but an internal variation of that value. Troops can improve the heals recieved.
- Mana modifiers. There’s a few variations, such silence (prevention of gaining mana), more/less mana generation and more/less x% of the total mana (you lose or gain mana). Everyone has the same mana, a 0-100% bar, but different heroes have different mana gain status (such as low, average and fast) that affect how much mana you generate per hit of tiles (or round in the AI case).
- Dispels. They can erase debuffs to status, mana and HP of your heros and buffs to status and mana of the opponent. Usually only one or the other, the big exception being antidotes.
- Special mechanic modifier. Special items that can shuffle the board, affect opponents round attacks (AI mechanic) and ressurect a dead target, these can only be achieved by using special items. Reflect damage and Share damage, these only special heros have, they affect the way you receive damage, by either reflecting a % or sharing with all heroes. If you prefer you could say that the mechanic of getting hit and modifying the buff/debuff is in here.
*The target system I explained in damage also work for the other types.
Items work exactly like a special attack and are included in the list above. As previously stated, same types can stack as long as they have different “icons”, even if the target of that modifier is the same status. The ones that don’t stack can’t also be altered, so they don’t add up, but replace each other. Buffs with a internal punishment cannot be dispel or altered neither.
Different skills can be a sum of different effects, Gormek, for example, is a HP modifier type splash damage with a status modifier debuff (less defense). Li Xiu is a HP modifier type all targets damage with a side of mana modifier (it reduces the current mana by %). Brienne is a full status modifier (more attack with a special increase mechanic modifier). Athena is a splash damage HP modifier with a side of status modifier and mechanic modifier. Throne is a full splash damage HP modifier. Melendore is a HP modifier type heal with a side of dispel (for opponents buffs). And so on.
Any change to defense, precision and attack will affect all damages, included the special attack damage, unless stated otherwise. That can be hard to see for lower % increases due the (2-3% damage variation for more or less), but is very clear when used with huge modifiers such as Brienne, Athena and Wu Kong.
None of the new cards brought any new mechanic, but ratter use existent ones in a different way. For example, if they release a heal per round buff, the mechanic for it already exists in the inverse type (damage per round), it’s just a new option. Same goes for any new heroes that might increase critical, it already exists, just have no heroes that uses it. Even silence isn’t really a new mechanic, it’s only a reduce mana gain all the way to zero.
In a coding point of view, making a skill that will, for exemple, “increase the critical chance by x% and extra y% every time you get hit” is not really a new mechanic, is he same ones we have now with different values. If you can see it, if you can think like a developer and see the “code logic”, you’ll be able to fully grasp the possibilities and how the skills work.
You’ll also be able to see how different bugs are actually all coming from a root problem. Like all Hel’s bugs are related to mana modifiers mechanics, not surprisingly other mana modifier heros are also being affected like Li Xiu. That’s because the base for both is the same mechanic.
