Platform, device version and operating system:
Steam
What you were expecting to happen, and what actually happened:
Visk’s spell description says
however, the extra damage part is skipped when yellow enemy is submerged.
For example
here it shows that, after casting Visk on Undine, Waverider and Mervorax have been targeted by extra damage to yellow part of the spell but submerged Mermaid has only been damaged by burn.
Submerged protects troops from AOE damage but targeting a specific color enemy should not count as AOE.
For example, if we look at Shocktopus (select mana gem and true damage all enemies of selected color):
we can see that both Mevorax and submerged Mermaid have been targeted.
The same is true for Rex Ahriman (also select mana gem and deal damage to all enemies of that color)
You can see that Waverider and Mervorax have been damaged and submerged Mermaid’s barrier is gone which means that she was also targeted by Red Ahriman’s spell.
How often does this happen? When did it begin happening?
I only noticed it today in Arena but it probably has been working like this since forever.
Steps to make it happen again
Use Visk with submerged yellow enemies.
So this appears intentional – but the question is, WHY are the two treated differently? If you face a team with a single shared color, Flame Soul and Red Ahriman (etc) can hit through Submerged where Visk (if yellow) and Thaumataur (if purple) cannot. Why the difference?
Argument A - in favor of damaging through Submerged:
If you face a team with no single shared color, then it is impossible to hit “all enemies” with any spell that targets by color, so according to this logic Submerged should be IGNORED by such spells, and Visk/Thaumataur are bugged.
Argument B - in favor of Submerged avoiding damage
Submerged protects a troop from AOE damage even if it is the only Troop available to strike - no distinction is made for how many targets the spell would actually strike. By which reasoning, this implies it’s Flame Soul (Red Ahriman, etc) that are bugged, while Visk/Thaumataur are working correctly.
However, that second argument is weaker because there’s an easy rebuttal/counter-argument available:
Because Submerged makes no distinction about whether there is one or more targets available (only the “type” of targeting used), a spell that is not guaranteed to strike all targets outright is not necessarily eligible for Submerged to dodge.
Of course, it is definitely possible the current behavior is intentional, but I don’t see a reason why the two (player-selected vs. fixed color) should be treated as different cases.
Things could get REALLY spicy if we suddenly had a spell damaging enemies of a “most used” (or “least used”) enemy color…
Now might also be a good time to question troops like Hex Rat or Leanansidhe, who damage a specific enemy plus “all enemies” above or below them, and whose spells appear to also ignore Submerged. But is this logical? Hex Rat, for example, if you target the first enemy then you are functionally targeting “all enemies” (in which case Submerged should apply?) but the spells damages through Submerged.
Sounds good to me. Like how “Stealthy” only protects from manual targeting by spells, and does not protect from spells that may target it by circumstance (e.g. “first/last” or “strongest/weakest”).
Besides, the request would be some small buff to Visk, Thaumataur, and War Cleric, in contrast to nerfing Flame Soul, The Grey King, Shocktopus, Red Ahriman, (etc).
