If counterattack kills hero while casting AOE or splash damage, AOE or splash damage may not hit rightmost hero(es)

I feel like this is new behavior in V23, so I apologize if I’m reporting something that isn’t new, is working as expected, etc. but as I’ve said, I’ve noticed this quite a bit since the last update, and since Cyprian is a fixture on my raid offense, I observe the behavior of Perfect Riposte pretty often.

I was raiding today and had just put up PR on my middle three heroes, leaving the wings uncovered. I sent some tiles into Atomos to trigger his special, hoping it would do enough to kill him without having to worry about the “immortal” part. He fired off, and I was happy to see his turn counter go away in the middle of his lengthy special animation (meaning that he was going to die from counterattack damage). But then I was surprised to see Valen come out of the attack unscathed.

Here’s my guess at what’s happening:

Atomos fires off and deals damage left to right (just like his animation).
He hits Rigard and deals damage.
He hits Sonya and deals damage, and she returns damage to him.
He hits Cyprian and deals damage, and he returns damage to him.
He hits Triton and deals damage, and he returns damage to him, bringing his health to 0.
He is dead, so he deals no damage to Valen.

The text of Atomos’ special reads

Deals 150% damage to all enemies.

It seems fortuitous for Valen to escape damage. Unfortunately I healed Valen before he was hit again, so I don’t know if this is just a display issue and he did take damage, or if he really wasn’t hit.

Also, I believe that this behavior occurs for all AOE, not just Atomos (because he needs another nerf). [Edit: confirmed for Anzogh and Grimm, as well.] So for an Azlar or Elena, where the animation hits all heroes at the same time, the damage is still dealt left to right; the hero’s health is recalculated after each hit, and if the hero takes enough counterattack damage to die, the attack deals no damage to the rightmost hero(es). I was just lucky enough to take a video of this battle, so that’s what I have on record.

I don’t recall what happens for a secondary effect, like a fire DOT. Maybe someone else can do that research. I also don’t know if this is true when attacking a defense with counterattack up, but maybe that’s because (unlike the computer) I know enough not to throw an AOE at buffed heroes, so I just haven’t observed it.

I also imagine that this is related to the mana issue being reported in V23. It seems like in this latest version, the order of operations under the cover has been changed, and the display and actual game mechanics are not in sync.

Strategy side note

Given that Valen+18 is the weakest hero in my raiding party, putting him at the rightmost spot allows me to offer him additional protection because of this behavior. If I can get PR up, he is less likely to be touched by AOE, which keeps him alive longer, which gives me more chances to use his special to help Triton hit like a truck.

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I found a weird behaviour of counterattack when you use splash damage (special that do damage to selected target and minor damage to nearby). It seems that minor damage is done before the full hit on selected target - when hero who’s hit by minor damage has a counterattack and your hero is low health, you’ll be dead before the damage is done to the selected target. I don’t remember if it was always this way, but it feels as some unnoticed change happend with recent version. Or I’ve just never experienced this situation before.

Two examples in pictures:
My raid attack team:

Defense team no. 1:


Enemy Obakan has counterattack on and has ~1000 HP, Hu Tao has ~ 400, other heroes are dead. My Richard is ready to fire its special but is low health (~100 HP). He always dies so I target Hu Tao to be sure to take him down with me. Bam! Obakan takes minor damage, Richard is dead but Hu Tao is untached, no damage done. Interestingly both of them has decreased attack. Weird!

I managed to found another defense team for testing purposes:


Similar scenario: Only Gregorian and Elena are alive with counterattack on. I have Athena and Richard ready to fire their specials. Athena is high health so she survives hitting both of them, Richard is again low health (~50 HP). I target Elena and fire, and it’s same as last time - Gregorian takes damage, Richard is dead but Elena takes nothing. Both have their attack decreased.

I am not telling that it’s bugged but I’d expect Richard’s damage to be applied to all heroes and then counterattacked damage to be resolved, this way it is just weird.

What’s your thoughts?

weird behavior for sure, if you could replicate it again and have it on video it will be easier to monitor the case and i think they should look into that as well

While it’s possible to reproduce it, it’s hard to get to such situation, but I was lucky, you can check it here:

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Thats amazing
and after checking with the exact Skill description order
Richard:

  • Deals damage to target and nearby enemies
  • reduce attack

it surely is a bug and there are many questions one of them is if he hits nearby first and dies before hitting the main target why is the main target getting the second point in Richard skill??

just have an extra question, do you know if both nearby enemies get hit or it start from left to right?

@Petri @KiraSG you should look into that please

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I messaged the Small Giant Staff to give them a heads up about this, thanks for reporting it!

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Thanks for taking the time to do this, and to confirm what I couldn’t. It’s much easier to observe as the attacker when the defense (mindlessly) attacks you, but you’ve been able to show that it works the same way in reverse. In addition, seeing that the debuff is still placed, even though the damage isn’t carried out fully, tells me that this is unintended. And finally, thanks for confirming what I suspected - that this is new behavior.

P.S. Hope you won that raid.

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Thanks for merging @zephyr1, I tried to search similar posts first, but it didn’t show this one.

It seems the damage is resolved left to right and counterattacked damage is applied immediately. If the caster dies during it the damage to next heroes is cancelled. It affects any heroes that can hit more than one target. Until it’s fixed everyone should think twice carefully how to target enemies with counterattack.

@Benn Yeah, I won :slight_smile:

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Thank you for the report, we’ll investigate the issue here!

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FWIW I just duplicated this. Came here to report, and found this!

I believe that a change to address this was included in version 24. My raids today have not allowed me to verify that it is back to the expected behavior. I have seen a lot of AOE heroes though!

Edit: confirmed that it is back to working as expected.

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