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Armor Reduction needs to be ratified in the order it applies in.

When a hero hits an enemy hero with a basic attack or ability that reduces the damage that a hero deals, the general order that things happen in is that the damage is dealt, and then the armor is reduced. The end result of this is that if Orphea hits an enemy hero with [[Engulfing Oblivion]], the damage that [[Crushing Jaws]] deal will still be 250, rather than 312.5

This is true for almost all abilities in the game, but to this day there remains some abilities that break this pattern, and some abilities that in the same talent or ability apply it both before the damage is applied and after, depending on the method of application.

The abilities that are applying their negative armor after the damage being applied are the following:

Abathur Envenomed Nest Arthas Shattered Armor Diablo Devastating Charge Jaina Northern Exposure Xul Amplify Damage Nova Crippling Shot Raynor Weak Spot Acquired Sgt. Hammer Shrapnel Mines Deckard Scroll of Identify Dehaka Primal Swarm Gul'dan Haunt Imperius Melting Touch(Prior to the adjustment seen on PTR, the damage from Flash of Anger was affected by this) Junkrat Big As Kel'Thuzad Barbed Chains Maiev Bonds of Corruption Maiev Shadow Strike Orphea Engulfing Oblivion Valeera Ambush Valeera Assassinate Varian Colossus Smash Whitemane Shared Punishment Deathwing Death Drop(NOTE: the meteors from Firestorm land after Deathwing, so they are affected) Call For Help Armor Shred Anomaly

As you can see, not a small list of abilities. Then we've got the list of abilities that apply the armor both before and after the damage:

Azmodan Tide of Sin(it applies either damage & armor(in that order) or just armor every 0.125s, and starts with armor, meaning the armor is applied both) Sylvanas Cold Embrace(The first instance of DoT damage will be affected by the armor debuff, the last won't be, reversed for applications caused by spread) Qhira Lingering Ailment(it applies the armor after the initial impact damage for impacting the hero you spin around, and before for the damage dealt to enemies hit by the chain)

And then there's the abilities that solely apply it before the damage is dealt:

Stitches Lacerate(All forms of Slam impact, regardless of distance) Starcraft Hellbat Mercenaries(Both Attackers and Defenders) Whitemane Purge the Wicked(The initial damage should not be affected by the armor reduction, and the data doesn't actually match what is seen? It's weird, but it goes here) Nova Anti-Armor Shells Samuro Way of the Blade Hanzo's Sharpened Arrowheads - Prior to this current PTR patch, it was both(Storm Bow applied it after the damage, Basic Attacks before), but now it is only before. The entire thing that made me mad enough to post this, because it showed that attention was here for even just a moment, and it was made worse.

And just for completion, here are the others:

Brightwing Critterize Chromie Time Troubles Chromie Unravelling Armor Tyrande Celestial Wrath & Hunter's Mark(technically shared armor debuff)

Something worth noting is that Tyrande's Celestial Wrath technically applies the armor reduction before the damage is dealt, but that seems to properly match the tooltip description.

So we've got 23 things that apply it before, 3 things that are mixed(previously 4.5), and 6(previously 5) that are applied before the damage. That's pretty much proof that the standard is for the damage to be dealt before the armor is applied.

Additionally, there is currently an existing issue with Genji's Dodge and Qhira's Upstage whereby having one stack of them remaining and then being "hit" by a basic attack would cause them to deal no damage, but you would still be affected by the armor reduction. There are a lot of ways that this could be resolved, such as nestling the damage & armor in a switch effect set for each basic attack that can apply armor, and swapping between just doing the damage if they have 1 stack of evasion(meaning the damage would remove the stack of evasion, but not apply the armor), and applying both the damage and armor if they have 0 or greater than 1 stack of evasion, this is most similar to how summons handle missing their spell damage-based basic attacks(which is actually an implementation that is poor for statistical based reasons, and should actually be reworked to use ValidateEffectAliases as part of the damage response)

I made a similar comment to this almost 3 months ago, which you can see here: https://www.reddit.com/r/heroesofthestorm/comments/elw71u/let_garroshs_double_up_talent_break_the_armor_cap/fdocftx/?context=5. This might have actually been the cause of Hanzo's Sharpened Arrowheads being adjusted, but as I said, it was done wrong.

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