So, this has been a bug for a while. During some releases/updates, it has worked and then gone back to not working again during subsequent updates. I haven't bothered to pursue it again until now as I never use ice armor. However, I do occasionally use frozen armor on my minion now and the bug does affect spirit armor, ice armor, and frozen armor.
Here's what happens. If you cast a shield, such as tower, then cast an armor over it, if you are hit by any damage that would trigger the shield normally then the shield will break but not offer any benefit. Combine this with the fact that your gear resistance bonuses do not apply to armor to begin with and you are in a fairly frustrating situation.
Here's a scenario just tried in the practice arena this morning. I used my son's myth with only two minotaur spells and a wand equipped. On my ice, I cast a tower shield, then cast a 3 power pip frozen armor giving me an absorb of 1050 points. My son's myth then started hitting me with:
Minotaur - The first hit broke the tower shield, neither did any damage. jolt - 110 jolt - 110 jolt - 110 jolt - 110 jolt - 110 Minotaur - armor broke, dealt 28 damage and 273 damage.
So, Minotaur does 50 + 445 meaning that the first minotaur did 495, the 5 jolts did 550 and we're up to 1045. The second minotaur's first hit was reduced by 5 and if you apply an approximate 39% resist to 45 damage, you get 28, and if you apply the resist to 445, you get 273. Two things are clearly apparent. First, the tower did nothing but broke anyway. Second, it proves that your gear resist doesn't apply to absorbs (armors, or whatever you wanna call them).
If a design decision has been made not to apply gear bonuses to absorbs (which frankly I think is lame), then at the very least it shouldn't allow shields under it to be broken with absolutely no benefit to the wizard using them.
To be honest, I have not tried with Ice Armor or Frozen Armor...
Now, here is the kicker... With spirit Armor, I have found that sometimes it does protect the shield and sometimes it does not... No idea why this is, because the shield was always cast first, then the Armor went on... And no other shield was placed on, otherwise I could understand...
Now, I agree with you, Armor should protect shields if placed before the armor and Shields should protect Armor if place after...
The one thing that I can understand though, is that resists are not counted in Armor... Realistically speaking of course, it wouldn't, so I can understand the concept...
You really analyze this game as much as I do... LOL between both of us, KI has their hands full...
Well my first question would be did your son or you win? xD
But i have encountered this only a few times, but really that is a main reason i dont use the absorbs because not only does it have glitches to it. Its just not effective like in this case your son's myth could have used pierce and its gone you know i just don't like it and i dont try to use it but yea i'm just agreeing that i have seen it before.
Now, here is the kicker... With spirit Armor, I have found that sometimes it does protect the shield and sometimes it does not..
Well, for me its been consistent when I've tried it, however... like I say, it has been "fixed" and "broken" and "fixed" and "broken" several times that I know of.
darthjt wrote:
Now, I agree with you, Armor should protect shields if placed before the armor and Shields should protect Armor if place after...
The one thing that I can understand though, is that resists are not counted in Armor... Realistically speaking of course, it wouldn't, so I can understand the concept...
Here is my thought as to why I think resist should be included in an absorb, ice and frozen armor in particular. When you consider the Rank X spells, with the exception of the minion spells they can all be boosted by gear bonuses... even healing. Now when you compare an absorb to a minion, its important to realize that a minion cannot be swept away for 0 pips or bypassed entirely by life stealing spells such as vampire. In the case of ice and frozen armor, they are the only rank X spells whose 7 power pip investment can be 100% mitigated by a 0 pip spell or a pet with pierce train. For all these drawbacks, it seems to me that they ought to consider gear values.
darthjt wrote:
You really analyze this game as much as I do... LOL between both of us, KI has their hands full...
Well my first question would be did your son or you win? xD
But i have encountered this only a few times, but really that is a main reason i dont use the absorbs because not only does it have glitches to it. Its just not effective like in this case your son's myth could have used pierce and its gone you know i just don't like it and i dont try to use it but yea i'm just agreeing that i have seen it before.
LOL. No, he didn't. Yeah, I could never make ice armor truly useful no matter how I tried so even though I submitted a ticket to have this bug fixed, I never bothered to continue to follow up on it since I never used the spell anyway. I was actually considering getting a life amulet and using spirit armor since it could be used without wasting all my pips and therefore has far more strategic use for me. lol But I digress... I do now see some strategic value in protecting my minion with frozen armor despite the many drawbacks and therefore would like KI to fix the bug associated with it. And hey, it tells the community at large how spells MUST be stacked to avoid wasting them in the meantime. :D
Almost everything I've seen in game, keep in mind I haven't come close to testing every school every possibility, is LIFO, last in first out. I'll give a quick example of the impact.
Say you're Storm facing a Storm opponent. You cast a +20% Storm damage first, a convert to Myth second, then a +25% Storm damage third. When you cast your Storm damage spell it'll ratchet it up by 25%, convert it, and damage the enemy, leaving the +20% on them. Why? Because the +25% was applied due to the fact you cast a Storm spell. It was then converted to a Myth spell therefore the +20% was for Storm damage NOT Myth damage and remained. This is also why you can use smart tactics and have multiple +dmg modifiers for different schools applied to a single target.
I've seen the exact same effect with armors. If the armor is cast prior to any shields the shield are applied before getting to the armor. If not, the armor is applied prior to any shields. Easy way to test is go find a R1 mob and try different combos to see the effect(s).
Almost everything I've seen in game, keep in mind I haven't come close to testing every school every possibility, is LIFO, last in first out. I'll give a quick example of the impact.
Yes, that is the way it stacks.
GaPopPop wrote:
I've seen the exact same effect with armors. If the armor is cast prior to any shields the shield are applied before getting to the armor. If not, the armor is applied prior to any shields. Easy way to test is go find a R1 mob and try different combos to see the effect(s).
That's actually the issue with this. If the shield is cast (as I did), and the armor is cast second (again, as I did), then the shield breaks (the one cast before the armor) but it does not give you any benefit whatsoever and the armor remains... well, assuming that the damage is less than the amount of the armor. Its clearly a bug.
So, this has been a bug for a while. During some releases/updates, it has worked and then gone back to not working again during subsequent updates. I haven't bothered to pursue it again until now as I never use ice armor. However, I do occasionally use frozen armor on my minion now and the bug does affect spirit armor, ice armor, and frozen armor. Here's what happens. If you cast a shield, such as tower, then cast an armor over it, if you are hit by any damage that would trigger the shield normally then the shield will break but not offer any benefit. Combine this with the fact that your gear resistance bonuses do not apply to armor to begin with and you are in a fairly frustrating situation. Here's a scenario just tried in the practice arena this morning. I used my son's myth with only two minotaur spells and a wand equipped. On my ice, I cast a tower shield, then cast a 3 power pip frozen armor
there was a post before about damage not adding up properly, and i wonder if that's what's happening instead. since you're testing with a minotaur, the only reduction from tower shield is by 25 points. perhaps it would be better to test using ninja pig treasure cards instead (since they are single hit and have set, calculatable damage) or any other set damage t.c., for that matter. it's still a bug somewhere, it seems, but it may not be with tower shield not doing its job. just a suggestion to help pinpoint the actual problem. -eli and crew
there was a post before about damage not adding up properly, and i wonder if that's what's happening instead. since you're testing with a minotaur, the only reduction from tower shield is by 25 points. perhaps it would be better to test using ninja pig treasure cards instead (since they are single hit and have set, calculatable damage) or any other set damage t.c., for that matter. it's still a bug somewhere, it seems, but it may not be with tower shield not doing its job. just a suggestion to help pinpoint the actual problem. -eli and crew
Hey Eli. Damage does add up pretty closely. There are minor issues due to rounding and the fact that your total percentages shown may not be exactly what they show (again due to rounding). For instance, my ice right now shows 39% resist. That 39% is actually calculated by adding up all the percentages from each item of equipment. Its quite likely that it isn't (mathematically speaking) exactly 39%, hence the discrepancy. In the case of this scenario, it isn't exact, but if the first hit of the first minotaur had been reduced by the tower, then the first hit of the second minotaur would have done about 12 instead of 28.
Hey Eli. Damage does add up pretty closely. There are minor issues due to rounding and the fact that your total percentages shown may not be exactly what they show (again due to rounding). For instance, my ice right now shows 39% resist. That 39% is actually calculated by adding up all the percentages from each item of equipment. Its quite likely that it isn't (mathematically speaking) exactly 39%, hence the discrepancy.
i'm interested in any further tests you would do on this because my storm mage (level 22) has secondary in life and i'm always changing between the amulets that give the 3 of one type of shield. but sometimes i'll stack these with spirit armor and it always seems to reduce the damage by the additional 80% before applying the damage done to it. it's hard to tell against creatures in krok who use various random damage spells. i'm wondering if i'm just fooling myself stacking these, or if i am actually helping myself. - gabriel, eli, and crew
i'm interested in any further tests you would do on this because my storm mage (level 22) has secondary in life and i'm always changing between the amulets that give the 3 of one type of shield. but sometimes i'll stack these with spirit armor and it always seems to reduce the damage by the additional 80% before applying the damage done to it. it's hard to tell against creatures in krok who use various random damage spells. i'm wondering if i'm just fooling myself stacking these, or if i am actually helping myself. - gabriel, eli, and crew
I'd be happy to test that for you. Do you have any specific tests in mind, or just the same kind of test (tower, followed by an armor) with spirit armor?
i'm interested in any further tests you would do on this because my storm mage (level 22) has secondary in life and i'm always changing between the amulets that give the 3 of one type of shield. but sometimes i'll stack these with spirit armor and it always seems to reduce the damage by the additional 80% before applying the damage done to it. it's hard to tell against creatures in krok who use various random damage spells. i'm wondering if i'm just fooling myself stacking these, or if i am actually helping myself. - gabriel, eli, and crew
I'd be happy to test that for you. Do you have any specific tests in mind, or just the same kind of test (tower, followed by an armor) with spirit armor?
pretty much the same kind of test would be appreciated. like something with set damage against a spirit armor with an 80% shield. then maybe try with a tower shield- if you get different numbers, then something's working, but something could be glitched. like, what if it's working with spirit armor fine, but by doing the same test it's not working properly with frozen armor? any aspects you can think of would be interesting to see the results of. thanks! :) -eli and crew
pretty much the same kind of test would be appreciated. like something with set damage against a spirit armor with an 80% shield. then maybe try with a tower shield- if you get different numbers, then something's working, but something could be glitched. like, what if it's working with spirit armor fine, but by doing the same test it's not working properly with frozen armor? any aspects you can think of would be interesting to see the results of. thanks! :) -eli and crew
I'll put something together and post my results. :D
pretty much the same kind of test would be appreciated. like something with set damage against a spirit armor with an 80% shield. then maybe try with a tower shield- if you get different numbers, then something's working, but something could be glitched. like, what if it's working with spirit armor fine, but by doing the same test it's not working properly with frozen armor? any aspects you can think of would be interesting to see the results of. thanks! :) -eli and crew
Well, I tested with my son's myth and my life. I equipped only a wand and starter deck with 2 minotaur spells on my son's myth so there would be no bonuses for him to deal with. My life has approximately 5% myth resist. On the life, I cast Legend Shield followed by Spirit Armor. Then, with the myth, I cast a minotaur. The first hit broke the -70% myth portion of the legend shield and second hit broke the spirit armor with 91 damage left over.
If the shield had done anything, then the first hit would have would have been reduced from 50 to approximately 15. That would mean that the most damage that could have been left would have been 60. Since it was 91, which is approximately 95 reduced by about 5%, that means the myth shield was broken without benefit, and that gear resistance values did not apply until after the armor was broken.
This test is completely consistent with the frozen armor test I opened this thread with. Did you want me to test any other scenarios for you?
pretty much the same kind of test would be appreciated. like something with set damage against a spirit armor with an 80% shield. then maybe try with a tower shield- if you get different numbers, then something's working, but something could be glitched. like, what if it's working with spirit armor fine, but by doing the same test it's not working properly with frozen armor? any aspects you can think of would be interesting to see the results of. thanks! :) -eli and crew
Well, I tested with my son's myth and my life. I equipped only a wand and starter deck with 2 minotaur spells on my son's myth so there would be no bonuses for him to deal with. My life has approximately 5% myth resist. On the life, I cast Legend Shield followed by Spirit Armor.
in another thread (spirit armor vs tower shield i think it was called) you posted, i believe, that the order mattered and if you cast the armor first that the tower shield did have an effect. did i misread that, or was that another test you did after posting this reply? -eli and crew
in another thread (spirit armor vs tower shield i think it was called) you posted, i believe, that the order mattered and if you cast the armor first that the tower shield did have an effect. did i misread that, or was that another test you did after posting this reply? -eli and crew
No, that's accurate. If the spirit armor is cast first, then you shield it, the shield will have an effect. But if the shield is cast first, then the armor, the shield will break when hit and there will be no benefit to the wizard. I'm sorry if I wasn't clear. It does have implications for those trying to "stack" armor and shields.... if you have an armor, shield, then armor again, the shield in the "middle" is useless.... I don't know about the armor under an armor... lol. I'll have to try that out but in the past it has always used just one armor per hit.
with the LIFO system, this unfortunately makes sense then. if the shield is cast first and the armor is cast second, then the armor reduces the damage to 0 and the shield is then taking 50% of the 0 amount. it sucks, but does seem like it's working properly in that case. well, i really appreciate you doing the additional tests for me and look forward to reading any results you come up with for any future tests you do. you're posted research will help me make sure i watch my order of casting defenses. :) -eli and crew
with the LIFO system, this unfortunately makes sense then. if the shield is cast first and the armor is cast second, then the armor reduces the damage to 0 and the shield is then taking 50% of the 0 amount. it sucks, but does seem like it's working properly in that case.
Well that's the thing... its an armor or "absorb". It therefore doesn't benefit from your gear bonuses and in exchange it should absorb all damage. If it is absorbing all the damage, it should not break the shield.
etherchaos wrote:
well, i really appreciate you doing the additional tests for me and look forward to reading any results you come up with for any future tests you do. you're posted research will help me make sure i watch my order of casting defenses. :) -eli and crew
