Mechanics thread

[Amgesan]

Hi.

I thought after noticing a strange interaction last night to make a thread that details the way certain mechanics resolve. I only have a small amount to draw from but sharing the information hopefully will make us all better pvp battlers (might even help in niche pve fights too).

Haunt - Pet A vs Pet B both use haunt in the same round. Pet A goes first, putting a dot on B. Pet B still uses haunt even though their target is dead. Haunt misses, pet B dies permanently (no UD racial). Pet A comes back to life and is still the active pet for that team. Haunt appears to be off cooldown but if used will miss then show 4 round cd.

Tidal Wave effects - These remove Puppies of the Flame/Sons of the Root creatures.

Ice Tomb - Can be cast on an enemy you cannot see or hit. Will be blocked on cast or detonation by Decoy effects.

Blinding Poison - If a pet dies with blinding poison up will cause any bombs cast before death to miss on resolution. Need to check interaction with Clockwork Gnome's Turret

Curse of Doom - Counts as an attack when it goes off, can be blocked/Ethereal.

Decoy effects - AoE attacks that deal X damage split evenly between targets consume 1 charge of Decoy. AoE attacks that deal X damage to each target consume 1 charge of Decoy per target. Decoy will block the cast of any 'environmental' dots like Swarm of Flies, Death and Decay, Flamethrower but if they are already up they deal damage and do not remove a charge. Attacks such as Make it Rain (50% hit chance) will always remove a charge from the first two pops. If both players have a blocking mechanism, priority is to take a charge from your enemy's block. Then if a player has more than 1 blocking mechanism active, it will take a charge from the one that was applied first (need citation for Cocoon Strike. For example: Team A has Beaver Dam with 2 charges and Decoy with 2 charges. Beaver Dam was placed first, then Decoy. Team B has Decoy with 1 charge. (Turn 1) Team A attacks with Breath, 1 charge is removed from Team B's Decoy. Team B attacks with Breath, 1 charge is removed from Team A's Beaver Dam.

[Topaz]

Another thing to add to shield effects (Decoy, Bubble, Cocoon Strike and even pets that uses lift-up or dive) is the Scorched Earth dot will always ignore it and keep doting (without removing the shield)

Touch of the Animus/Plagued Blood - When enemy pet has either of those and deal dmg to itself (BONESTORM, Body Slam) it will also heal itself. If an enemy pet use either on you, and a pet of yours deal dmg to the current pet (Scorched Earth dot) with Touch of the Animus/Plagued Blood debuff the pet that casted Scorched Earth will heal itself for hitting a pet from your own team.

This move always goes first is a lie - Surge seems to be the fastest attack, even beating Ethereal, also speed doesnt seem to matter for this.
Further checking should be done to determine priority of all "This move always goes first" to be sure.

[Vek]

Haunt - When it used to have no cooldown the Valkyr always died when it missed. Now this only happens in the scenario you described.

Wave - Things these remove include Turrets/Rockets/Sons(Puppies) of Flame(Root)/Cyclone/Minesfield. And most importantly at this time though is that it removes two stacks of Decoy in one go. Also it will "remove" Traps but instead of removing it the Trap will trigger instead...
Edit: Clean-Up also counts as a Wave but differs in that it will only hit the front line pet and not all opposing pets.

Ice Tomb/Geyser/Whirlpool/Elementium Bolt/Stun Seed/Entangling Roots etc - These have two chances to miss, one when cast and one when they go-off. If you are blinded or a decoy/bubble is up when you cast the ability then you won't even activate the spell since it misses or is blocked, can also miss during sandstorm/darkness etc. But even if the active pet is using Dodge or similar avoidance your spell won't go to waste. On the other hand when the ability goes off it can be avoided by blinding poison/decoy/Dodge/burrow/Lift-off/Ethereal/Bubble and even Haunt since Haunt will avoid end of turn abilities.
Also since these abilites are not pet specific but kind of attached to the Active pet slot they can be cleansed.
Curse of Doom on the other hand can only be cleansed by team cleanse or the pet itself, since the curse is attached to a particular pet.

Launch Rocket - If you got two pets with this ability one pet can build the rocket and the other can launch the same rocket.

Topaz - Since both abilities can't actually go first there will probably be a roll off just as when two pets are the same speed. Either that or the faster pet will go first with it's go first ability.

[Topaz]

I thought it has some roll but it doesnt, surge always go 1st, tried with an emperor crab p/p which has 211 speed, and than with a frigid frostling with 260, and in both cases surge was always 1st, tried against; Blinkstrike, Charge and Trihorn Charge, it always went 1st. The only ability that I tried and beat it was Deflection. when you use an always first abilty the pet speed will change - you can see that that some attacks - for example trihorn charge or blinkstrike will add 1625 speed to the attacker, but surge on the other hand will add 10 times as much - 16250 speed, the same as defensive attacks like deflect and ethereal.

[Iamnotapet]

An error in coding? extra zero?
I can see the defensive moves being priority over offensive moves. but that is strange with surge vs blinkstrike (essentially same DMG and spammable just different racial strengths) or trihorn charge 1rd CD and 85% hit with higher DMG. interesting.

would make more sense to have it on the same tier as those two and the defensives on a different tier, then have normal rules apply, highest speed wins same speed count toss.

@Vek you are such a wealth of knowledge, cheers for those clarifications.

[Kpb321]

Yeah. Always goes first abilities just add some amount of speed to the pet and then follow normal rules for determining who and what goes first. It seems like surge might have gotten an bit too much of a speed boost but we don't know for sure unless we can get blizzard to comment on it. Surge VS Deflection or Ethereal should end up being based on the base speed of the pet since they are both adding the same amount of extra speed. Same thing if you do blinkstrike vs charge or Trihorn charge.

[Vek]

Would be interesting to see how Surge, and other priority moves, work with Rush.

[Vek]

Blood in the Water + Bleed
Blood in the Water is a big hitting attack but only 50% hit chance. If the target pet is bleeding Blood in the Water will hit regardless. Even if you are blinded by Blinding Poison, -100% to hit, Blood in the Water will hit the bleeding pet. It will of course miss if the target pet uses a faster avoid, like dodge/burrow etc. Next best thing you can do, unless you want to take the hit of course, is just to switch out the bleeding pet. Now Blood in the Water is only 50% hit again which gives you a shot that you don't get damaged and will apply a cooldown to your opponents big hitting attack. Sure there is always those times when you will get hit anyway, or that your opponent expected you to switch and used bleeing again.

[Vek]

Percent based damage
Things that does x % damage, like Toxic Skin/Corpse Explosion/Explode/Glowing Toxin/Trample(part of it), does straight up that percent in damage. Pretty much nothing affects it. Not shields not buffs. This can of course be both good or bad depending. Good if your opponent has a huge Shell Shield, not so good if your opponent has Shattered Defence/Black Claw up.

[Vek]

Comeback/Early Advantage
These abilities do extra damage if the attacking pet has lower health. This is calculated after the first hit, so if the first hit brings the damaged pet below the health of the attacking pet the second part of the attack won't be applied. Also a strange side-effect/bug is that if you are blinded by Blinding Poison for example the first part will miss and do no damage, then the second part that apparently has no hit chance will hit regardless if you are blinded or not(of course depending on health).

[Vek]

Nocturnal Strike vs Spectral Strike
These two abilities at first glance seem very much alike but there is a slight difference. They are both 50%, same damage, 3 turn cooldown abilities. They will both get bonus to hit if the opposing pet is blinded. Here is the difference. Nocturnal Strike will increase to 100% hit while Spectral Strike will "always hit", just like Blood in the Water vs Bleeding pet. The problem is that most often blind is applied by weather changing with Call Darkness, this will in turn affect your own pet as well with a -10% to hit. So if you count on Darkness to blind the opposing pet Nocturnal Strike will only have 90% to hit while Spectral Strike will still always hit. There is a defensive option here for the target, if you switch to an elemental that is not affected by weather both Nocturnal Strike and Spectral Strike hit chance will go down to 40%. Of course there are other ways to apply a blind, but they are often not lasting very long.

[Vek]

Undead Racial vs certain kills
If your undead pet is killed by a Minefield then you will still get two turns to do things. This also seem to happen when an undead pet is killed by Sticky Grenade(and possibly Bombing Run).

Agony
This ability increases in damage the longer it lasts. If you spam agony you will only do the tinyest amount of damge each turn, it is often better just to pass to do more damage unless you can do something else instead.

[Topaz]

Would be interesting to see how Surge, and other priority moves, work with Rush.

Rush adds 100% speed, the slowest option is a Cenarion/Hippogryph Hatchling which has 276 speed, double it and you get to 552. the fastest pet possible is a s/s Silky Moth which has 535 when buffed, so the buff is just a lazy way of matching the description.

[Jerebear]

Undead Racial vs certain kills
If your undead pet is killed by a Minefield then you will still get two turns to do things. This also seem to happen when an undead pet is killed by Sticky Grenade(and possibly Bombing Run).

Bombing run counts (any "end of round" abils will). I use the double undead to my advantage versus Sully (I force Socks into a double undead round so I can stun him and force the back row swap on him).

[Sternish]

Could someone clarify the pet selection of Nether Gate for me? I'll give you a for-instance.

I have pets A, B and C in slots 1, 2 and 3 respectively. I start with pet B who is facing a Fiendish Imp who I anticipate is going to use Nether Gate this round. If I want to keep pet B in to face the Imp, which pet would I swap to prior to the Nether Gate in order for Nether Gate to gate BACK in the original pet B that started against him?

As far as I can tell, Nether Gate doesn't take in to account pet health in the way that Sweep does. Basically, I just want to be able to "juke" the Nether Gate and end up with my original pet in the fight.

Thanks

[Kpb321]

as far as I know it's just plain random. No way to ensure you get a particular pet swapped in.

[Sternish]

as far as I know it's just plain random. No way to ensure you get a particular pet swapped in.

Ah, ok. That's a bummer. Thanks for the response.

[Sile9]

You would bring in pet A. The swap is actually based off of which slot they're in picking the very next one in line. Nether Gate on A brings in B, Nether Gate on B brings in A, and Nether Gate on C brings in A. There is no way to keep C in on the swap because no matter what you do either A or B will come in, but at the same time keeping a mechanical in the third slot will protect it from being swapped in.

[Sternish]

You would bring in pet A. The swap is actually based off of which slot they're in picking the very next one in line. Nether Gate on A brings in B, Nether Gate on B brings in A, and Nether Gate on C brings in A. There is no way to keep C in on the swap because no matter what you do either A or B will come in, but at the same time keeping a mechanical in the third slot will protect it from being swapped in.

Great! That helps out tremendously. It was driving me nuts, I'm always reading posts about, I juked this or that and I never could figure out the dynamic of pulling it off properly, so thank you for helping me out

[Myon]

Yes, slot position of pets matters when getting hit by abilities such as Nether Gate.

Basically you have pets A, B, and C and it will always bring out the 'topmost' pet from your backrow, as Sile pointed out.