Bluetracker

Tracks Blizzard employees across various accounts.

Blizzard, can we know how Parry/Evasion/Blind is supposed to work with add-ons so we know when it is bugged?

Bit of a back story, Giant Killer used to be ability damage and trigger things like Spell Shield and Dampen Magic. Blizzard decided this wasn't really the behavior they were looking for and changed these to a "null" damage type. Not ability, not auto attack. But because they were add-ons to auto attacks and not auto attacks the null damage was going through things like Evasion, which was an indirect nerf to Illidan.

Blizzard fixed that. Blinds, Evasions, and Parries negated add-on damage. A couple of patches ago there was a pretty huge bug with The Bigger They Are... not performing this way, which made the talent slightly abuseable in certain situations. It was fixed.

But this patch things are kind of all over the place and because Blizzard hasn't given us a clear cut set of rules on what the intention is, I genuinely don't know if these are bugs or design decisions. It also makes me concerned because a lot of the bugs involve Varian's Parry and given how strong he is right now in the pro scene always concerned he is going to be changed because of a bug.

Goes through Parry:

Giant Killer, Sizzlin' Attacks, Mini-Gun WITHOUT Bigger They Are... (Bigger They Are... fix still works), Giant's Curse on Xul.

Does Not Go Through Parry:

Tassadar's 16 talent Focused Beam, Titan Killer (odd, because Giant's Curse is very similar talent wise)

None of these go through Blinds or Evasion. I didn't test the pretty large variety of other add-on effects, like Manticore on Valla, Fiery Brand on Illidan, Spectral Leech on Leoric, etc., there are just to many. If someone would like to test them I'll update the list.

On an unrelated note Focused Beam damage DOES count for Life Leech on Tassadar's shields, something no other auto attack damage add-on in the game currently does. Which in my mind really highlights the inconsistency with the way these effects are probably being coded.

Neyman

Posted 7 years, 7 months ago (Source)

I think he meant unify in terms of code not in game behaviour. If you create 4 different things which should act alike one of them might (or rather bound to) be forgotten to change or act differently in unusual conditions.

Btw unified mechanics are easier to understand, play with/against and from what I see prefered in hots. Albeit they require exceptions like 'doesn't break stealth', 'reset autoattack' or '"pierces armour'. Personally I'm fan of unedited mechanics with multiple exceptions.

Definitely. What we want is for players to (mostly) understand what will happen when they use an ability or talent. This will involve some unification of tooltip terminology, and some modification of what actually happens.
Neyman

Posted 7 years, 7 months ago (Source)

HotS is evolving into an awesome game and it's a lot different right now than anyone probably imagined back in development. I bet there are a ton of systems in this game that are "a giant spiderweb of interactions that can be confusing," and I love that the HotS dev team is constantly reevaluating and revisiting things they think needs addressing.

Thanks for the kind words, we appreciate it. The game has definitely grown over time in terms of complexity and size of content. Our guys keeping the game running are doing an amazing job, despite our best efforts to throw a new hero and 2-3 major updates at them on a monthly basis. As you can imagine, when you have 22 Heroes you don't have to worry about nearly as many interactions as the 60+ we have now, and it requires us to have less "1 off" interactions and more systemic solutions whenever we can.
Neyman

Posted 7 years, 7 months ago (Source)

We're actually actively working on unifying these rules. There's a giant spiderweb of interactions that can be confusing, and we're taking a step back to provide a better holistic solution going forward.

<blockquote class="quoted">
    <div class="md"><p>I think he meant unify in terms of code not in game behaviour. If you create 4 different things which should act alike one of them might  (or rather bound to) be forgotten to change or act differently in unusual conditions. </p>

<p>Btw unified mechanics are easier to understand, play with/against and from what I see prefered in hots. Albeit they require exceptions like 'doesn't break stealth', 'reset autoattack' or '"pierces armour'. Personally I'm fan of unedited mechanics with multiple exceptions.</p>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div class="md"><p>Definitely.  What we want is for players to (mostly) understand what will happen when they use an ability or talent.  This will involve some unification of tooltip terminology, and some modification of what actually happens.</p>
</div> (<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/heroesofthestorm/comments/5uo3l4/blizzard_can_we_know_how_parryevasionblind_is/ddwfo53">Neyman</a>)
<hr/>

<blockquote class="quoted">
    <div class="md"><p>HotS is evolving into an awesome game and it's a lot different right now than anyone probably imagined back in development. I bet there are a ton of systems in this game that are "a giant spiderweb of interactions that can be confusing," and I love that the HotS dev team is constantly reevaluating and revisiting things they think needs addressing.</p>
</div>
</blockquote>
<div class="md"><p>Thanks for the kind words, we appreciate it.  The game has definitely grown over time in terms of complexity and size of content.  Our guys keeping the game running are doing an amazing job, despite our best efforts to throw a new hero and 2-3 major updates at them on a monthly basis.  As you can imagine, when you have 22 Heroes you don't have to worry about nearly as many interactions as the 60+ we have now, and it requires us to have less "1 off" interactions and more systemic solutions whenever we can.</p>
</div> (<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/heroesofthestorm/comments/5uo3l4/blizzard_can_we_know_how_parryevasionblind_is/ddwfmbx">Neyman</a>)
<hr/>

<blockquote class="quoted">
    
</blockquote>
<div class="md"><p>We're actually actively working on unifying these rules.  There's a giant spiderweb of interactions that can be confusing, and we're taking a step back to provide a better holistic solution going forward.</p>
</div> (<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/heroesofthestorm/comments/5uo3l4/blizzard_can_we_know_how_parryevasionblind_is/ddvtw3k">Neyman</a>)
<hr/>

<p><div class="md"><p>Definitely.  What we want is for players to (mostly) understand what will happen when they use an ability or talent.  This will involve some unification of tooltip terminology, and some modification of what actually happens.</p>
</div> (<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/heroesofthestorm/comments/5uo3l4/blizzard_can_we_know_how_parryevasionblind_is/ddwfo53">Source</a>)</p>

<p><div class="md"><p>Thanks for the kind words, we appreciate it.  The game has definitely grown over time in terms of complexity and size of content.  Our guys keeping the game running are doing an amazing job, despite our best efforts to throw a new hero and 2-3 major updates at them on a monthly basis.  As you can imagine, when you have 22 Heroes you don't have to worry about nearly as many interactions as the 60+ we have now, and it requires us to have less "1 off" interactions and more systemic solutions whenever we can.</p>
</div> (<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/heroesofthestorm/comments/5uo3l4/blizzard_can_we_know_how_parryevasionblind_is/ddwfmbx">Source</a>)</p>

<p><div class="md"><p>We're actually actively working on unifying these rules.  There's a giant spiderweb of interactions that can be confusing, and we're taking a step back to provide a better holistic solution going forward.</p>
</div> (<a href="https://www.reddit.com/r/heroesofthestorm/comments/5uo3l4/blizzard_can_we_know_how_parryevasionblind_is/ddvtw3k">Source</a>)</p>
    
    <hr/>

Bluetracker

Blizzard, can we know how Parry/Evasion/Blind is supposed to work with add-ons so we know when it is bugged?

Tweet