Rope Dart + Reflect = Lethal Damage

Bug Reports
1

Platform, device version and operating system:
iOS 12.4, iPhone 7

Screenshot or image:
None included, but I took a video that I will email to Support once they contact me.

What you were expecting to happen, and what actually happened:
I used Rope Dart against a troop with Reflect. I expected it to strip away the 48 armor and deal 27 damage, meaning Reflect should have done at most 38 damage. Instead my hero took 162 damage and died.

How often does this happen? When did it begin happening?
My guild mate claimed in chat that it happened. So I tested it and it worked, first try. I am going to assume it started when Reflect was added to the game.

Steps to make it happen again

  1. Find a troop with Reflect
  2. Cast Rope Dart (possibly any other Mang-like weapon, but I did not test those).
  3. Watch as your hero dies.

My team:
[6396,1228,6042,6042,3025,3,2,1,1,3,1,3,14021]
AI team:
[1239,6638,6638,6638,3052,1,2,1,2,0,0,0,14026]

5 Likes
2

Someone else in my guild says it applies to Trickster’s Shot also, which means it’s probably a general issue with “strip armor” effects. Next up, testing Grave Knight and Bone Dragon.

1 Like
3

Someone commented in one of the update threads that this occurs because the “destroy armor” spells actually deal 1000 damage to armor. I think he saw it with Megavore.

3 Likes
4

Yes, “destroy armor” is coded as “do 1000 damage to armor”. Now that reflect will be around, it’s about time they changed that.

5 Likes
5

Crazy idea: if an effect doesn’t pop Barrier, it should not trigger Reflect.

8 Likes
6

Just curious. Was Reflect apart of the Beta testing? (QA obviously didn’t test this. So I’m just curious if the unpaid testers were even given the opportunity to.)

2 Likes
7

Diablo III runs a PTR (Public Test Realm) before major updates. The primary purpose is to allow the community to test balance changes. In that light, I find it extraordinary that balance changes are the one element excluded from beta testing in Gems of War.

3 Likes
8

About balance in general: the first bell chimed in 2000, when Warlords Battlecry were released. Do you think it’s possible to balance 9 races ideally? (And then 12 and 16 in WBC II and WBC III respectively). Blizzard had balance issues with 3 races only (Starcraft), and they eventually fixed them. But Warlords series and balance - sorry, developers, no offense, just plain facts about balance absence.

9

Can’t say for sure. I was not able to participate this time around. I can say, though, that it is very unlikely that I or any other beta tester would have noticed this. In order to find this we would have needed to come up with a way to reliably generate Reflect, and then try using various effects against the protected troops. This is much more involved than unpaid user-access players should be expected to manage.

5 Likes
10

Balance is a tricky thing. There’s no way you can balance everything in a game.

If I were trying to balance stuff, I’d be focussing on new content and heavily-used content. My benchmark for new content would be: no worse than equivalent content already in the game (Plunder & Peril would fail this test). For something like Reflect, I’d be keen to make sure it has only a small effect on existing game elements – perhaps up to 20%.

Specific Request
Please change all Reflect-like effects so they are calculated based on the actual damage received, and never on the theoretical damage done.

In any case, “removing armour” is not the same as “doing damage,” as we all know from Guild Wars (right?).

2 Likes
11

I don’t think anyone expects it. Just appreciate what y’all do. But you can only do what you have access to.

12

I wouldn’t automatically assume that this isn’t intended behaviour until we hear from someone official. It’s weird and I would consider it unintentional (=bug), but they could just say nope, that’s how we meant for it to work (=feature!) :crazy_face:

1 Like
13

Balance aside, it is a little disappointing to see the flaws between effects interactions at release (and some like Ubastet/Saviour being left unfixed) in a game with a small dev team: one would expect that the dev who coded ‘Destroy Armor’ would realize that this would happen with Reflect.

Actually, I would expect ‘Destroy Armor’ not to count as damage at all, and instead just modify the Armor variable to zero. Just like Lethal should do (but inexplicably doesn’t).

It is a great game and it is light-years ahead of some black holes like LGoH, but these are rather basic programming shortcomings, that regrettably keep on piling up with limited clean-up.

Still hoping one day they’ll release some of the modules as Open Source so the community can polish this without adding to the devs’ workload
:blush::crossed_fingers::vulcan_salute:

14

Thank you for bringing this to our attention!

We are currently looking into this issue, testing it as we speak. We will update you as soon as we can. Thank you for informing us and your patience as we investigate.

17 Likes
15

Had the same issue with Mang against a troop with Reflect and I didn’t know what happened or why I died, didn’t know that 1000 damage to armor, it’s good to know. I’ll keep this in mind until a new patch is released. I’m on PS4 btw.

1 Like
16

Is this strip armor = 1000 dmg a confirmed thing?
I seem to remember that using megavore on a whole barriered team strips armor but left barrier intact (except for the selected target obviously).

I thought that stripping was counted as enemy stat reducing, not damage.

17

This is one of those things I really really really really really really really really really really wish was clarified in-game.
So many mechanics and specific effects can only be learned through trial and error or dredging through the forums.

2 Likes
18

Yeah, just like the freeze mechanic. That’s not intuitive.

I’d be fine if they left stuck with simple descriptions in the tool tips, but it should be explained better on the website’s Game Guide then.

1 Like
19

No it wasn’t. Well it was but not in the sense that you’re thinking. I encountered it once, but it was given by a troop that granted a random status effect.

1 Like
20

I vote we just make this the Reflect is broken thread.
Speaking of which…
Sacrificial Priest did it’s thing and killed an ally. My first troop had/has reflect and had Barrier but no damage was done to Sacrificial Priest.

Screenshot_20190830-082348
Screenshot_20190830-0823482960×1440 2.13 MB

(My barrier was removed. So therefore damage was done to my first troop? It says on the notes. Reflect will trigger if any damage is done. Therefore I should lose my barrier and that damage is reflected back to the priest.)

3 Likes