What you were expecting to happen, and what actually happened
I was playing the first battle in Crypt Keepers delve.
The enemy team total health stats were: First - dead, Second 8+9=17, Third 8+9=17, Fourth 4+9=13.
Infernus has damage value of 39, and adjacent damage of 19 (additional magic from delve hoard).
I cast Infernus.
What Happened: Infernus hit Fourth troop, killing fourth troop and splash damage killing third troop. Infernusâ second cast does not occur. Five gems exploded. The Second enemy troop remained untouched.
What I was expecting: After Infernusâ first cast, killing fourth and third troops, I was expecting Infernusâ second cast to hit the second troop.
How often does this happen? When did it begin happening?
I have a video capture on the PS4 of this occurrence. I believe it is consistent though.
Steps to make it happen again
Use Infernus to kill troops with the first cast. On the surface it appears Infernus is trying to hit a dead enemy with the second cast and nothing happens.
It happens on PC as well and Iâm guessing the second cast is hitting the 4th enemy twice but since the enemy is dead along with the 3rd one, it does nothing which I find oddâŚ
I have noticed this too, and I believe itâs related to Ubastetâs fix⌠Infernus has always selected its two targets at the same time: in this particular example, he selected 4th and 3rd troops. Before 4.0 he would have cast first on 4th, killing the 3rd troop with splash damage, and then cast on the (now empty) 3rd spot, with the resulting splash damage killing the 2nd troop.
What I think it does now is cast on the 4th (killing the 3rd too), then check whether its second target is still alive and only if itâs alive do the second cast. This was likely introduced to prevent Ubastetâs double kill, but it also resulted in yet another small nerf to infernus and any other troop that works like this.
I agree with you that the target selection should be changed to be sequential (choose first target, cast, then choose the second from the remaining troops and cast again), not only for Infernus but for other troops with the same mechanic that sometimes lose damage output for no good reason (e.g. ship cannon), hopefully the devs will agree!
If your example is correct, it would still be a bug due that on OP mention that 2nd troop remain untouched, in the example you mention, 2nd troop should at least receive the adjacent damage.
I believe this has always been the case, since the game was coded into Unity.
Targets are selected and locked when the spell is activated. If only one enemy remains at this point, it can be targeted twice and hit twice as the spell resolves. Otherwise two enemies will be target-locked.
As the spell casts, it resolves each shot and its splash damage, sequentially and in full before firing the second shot. If the splash damage from the first shot kills the target of the second shot, then the second shot is cancelled and doesnât fire - losing it, and losing its splash damage.
Iâve raised this before and understand itâs a property of the Unity code base, i.e. too hard to fix without recoding half the game. I donât think it matters so much - itâs not like Infernus is lacking for hitting power - and thematically it makes no sense for splash damage to hit a nearby enemy from a shot that didnât hit its target.
I disagree with this sentiment. If Infernus has a significant chance of doing half damage, his spell cost needs to be adjusted downward to compensate. This, of course, makes him more of a beast in the early match. The best fix is to undo the âfixâ that made it so attacks on empty team slots donât resolve. (Edit: if indeed thatâs what is happening.)
What i think is that the spell in devs eyes was bugged and they âfixedâ it now. From what i gather if splash damage kills a unit and infernus tergeted that unit as 2nd target it would still deal splash dmg. But now after 4.0 it negates the 2nd damage. So if you had pos 2,3,4 alive and first dmg attacked 4th and killed 3rd, infernus wont target 2nd position. He wanted 3rd when the spell was cast and the target was dead when the 2nd part of the spell wanted to activate.
SPOILER ALERT
If Infernusâ ability is broken / unfixable / working as designed ?.. Then this will be the same for the upcoming Sea Of Sorrow Legend troop.
Infernusâ spell is currently working as intended.
The 2 spell targets are chosen when the Spell is cast, if the second target is killed by the first cast then the 2nd cast doesnât trigger.
The way this works may be reviewed in the future but no ETA or promises on that sorry!
This stealth ânerfâ is the first time I heard that infernus was not originally working as intended. Not happy the way core game mechanics get changed like that.
As far back as I can recall, Infernus would target two slots when the spell was cast. If the troop in the second slot died due to splash damage, the second shot would still trigger (and could knock off low-health units on either side of the recently-vacated slot). If Infernus now checks whether a troop slot is filled before firing its shot, this is indeed a change to how its spell is resolved.
