Magic damage and resistance questions.....

[ArchLordJames]

Could somebody please specify what is considered magic damage as opposed to physical damage? I know that obviously berzerkers and knights and archers do physical damage, and pretty sure that dragons do mostly physical too with a little mixed in fire. However what is considered magical damage? Are all frost mages attacks considered magic? Or are they ice? What about healers?

Secondly, I just got an armor upgrade that said it gives the wearer +70% magic damage resistance. What enemies do magic damage? I have no idea how magic resistance on my characters helps me... are there enemies that do magic damage? Or is it only for example when zelemir zaps me with spells?

Please can somebody clarify this for me?

[coyot]

off the top of my head, without looking through game data, only bosses deal magic damage, all attacks from creeps, melee ans projectile, are physical.
Not sure about defender attacks, I'd expect light from healers to be magic, but fire and ice not.

Try exporting data as mod and looking through skill definitions, maybe the flavours of damage are listed there.

[larsiusprime]

Here's the full run down:

Every single attack from a creep, with the exception of boss spells, are "physical." Any projectile attacks are considered "ranged" (and "physical-ranged" if they are also physical) whereas any attacks from enemies that don't produce a visible projectile are either "melee" (mad ghouls, cultists) or "area" (splitter burst damage).

For defenders, the only ones who have magical attacks are healers and ice mages. Healer light is considered magical, as is every ice mage attack (since they are mages). We thought about making the dragon's fire be magic for a while, but decided in the end to treat it as "physical." So, fire breath and fire ball are "physical" and "ranged", though fire ball is technically not "physical-ranged" specifically so that NG+ worms can't dodge it (that nuance is admittedly kind of a hack).

In the end, magic resistance is mostly only of use against bosses. I'm pretty sure there's not a single normal enemy in the game that uses magic. This does mean that magic resistance is generally a lot less useful than physical resistance, but (not having played NG+ all the way through myself) I think it can be a big help against bosses, and a life-saver against an ill-timed "decimate" attack from Zelemir or Eztli.

[Ohlmann]

Larsius, to be honest, it's completely useless. Zelemir never do enough damage to threaten anyone, and while Etzli could, you have Zelemir spamming heal anyhow.

[coyot]

Larsius, to be honest, it's completely useless. Zelemir never do enough damage to threaten anyone, and while Etzli could, you have Zelemir spamming heal anyhow.

Not completely useless, although it might be rare. I've lost defenders several times when cultists spawned, Eztli cast decimate and before my healer could say hello, the cultist finished off a defender. So, having a good resist armor eliminates this rare risk and at least theoretically gives a bit of tactical freedom to smaller parties where healer coverage is not taken for granted.

[Ohlmann]

Not completely useless, although it might be rare.

Maybe that in theory, when star align, it could help a little bit.

But seriously, with the ungodly amount of heal Zelemir currently pour, and the tame damage Etzli do, you can even not use healer on most unit.

[coyot]

Well, in my hero-only plays, with just one healer in place, I lost a few attempts at the last battle exactly because Eztli's Decimate fired with cultists in place. No amount of healing can save you when the unit's been decimated right now and receives strong attacks, be it from 2 monstrosities or 2 cultists. Maybe if your healer had all other skills disabled it'd decrease the chance of this happenning, but if he's busy casting any other skill, it might take serious time before he gets to healing that particular unit (other damaged units in range make him busy, too)

Which leads me to a question:
Lars, what's the logic for healer's choice of targets for healing? Lowest current HP? Or lowest current HP + armor?

[larsiusprime]

I'm pretty much in agreement that outside of boss battles, magic resistance isn't all that useful. I think this was basically a breakdown of communication between me and Anthony - I implemented the resistance features but didn't tell him how many enemies we had actually given magic too, so ... my bad! Glad it has some use in "hero mode" but I'll try to avoid oversights like this in the future. As for healer logic... I'll look that up on Monday. I think he just looks for the target with the least HP.

[coyot]

As for healer logic... I'll look that up on Monday. I think he just looks for the target with the least HP.

Think it'd be possible (as in trivial) to let him pick the most endangered one? The scenario of 6 guys hit by Decimate but only 1 to be targeted is the place where I'd want the healer to behave smartly. And he could simply use the same logic that the enemies use to pick targets. If any defender is currently "under attack", it might be desirable to heal him first. (Although the question is, where to stop? Full health? Or some fuzzy logic, i.e. bring everybody at 50% of max HP first...

[larsiusprime]

I'll dig into the code and see on Monday. Just off the top of my head, it shouldn't be *too* hard to tell if a defender is currently "under attack" - ie, if any enemies are currently targeting them. Heck, I could just have each defender start tracking how much damage they've taken over the last 5 seconds, that might be easier. I'm sure *something* could be done to give healers a slight edge towards pulling your guys back from the brink.

[coyot]

It's a very low-prio thing I'd say, definitely below any of the open bugs. I was more curious whether it's already somehow handled(and mostly whether armor is taken into account, as that's the most obvious one).