Stackable or unstackable?

[Karzama]

Hi, am just wondering if these abilities are stackable if two items have the same ability or a different varient (ex. crit 20% for 2x and crit 10% for 1.25x). This isn't too important but I thought it would be good if I could clarify it.

Abilities in question:
- Critical Strike,
- Spiked Shell,
- Hardened Skin,
- Bash.


Also if it's not too much hassle what is possible to stack with Barrage? I'm aware that Searing Arrows does but Burning Oil does not so I just wondered if anyone knew the specifics.

Thanks in advance

 

[Dr Super Good]

- Critical Strike,
- Bash.

Yes they do stack to some extent but not perfectly.

They each roll separately but only 1 may ever proc per attack. They also roll in a specific order based upon acquisition with the last added one rolling first. This means that having 2 of the same critical adding item suffer from diminishing returns because the intersection probability of both criticals is lost as only 1 will proc. Bash works almost identical to critical as far as I can tell so it should also suffer such scaling.

Bash might overwrite critical hits. Due to it adding flat damage often this could cause an attack to be weaker.

When using criticals of different magnitudes and changes it is always best to have the one with the highest damage and lowest probability at top so it rolls first, otherwise it will have its proc probability greatly reduced by criticals above it. A 100% proc critical will bar all criticals below it from executing always.

To reflect what this means. Having 3 criticals of 2 times damage with 10% chances will result in a total of 27.1% chance to do 2 times damage. Where as the first critical adds 10% extra damage on average, all 3 only add 27.1% extra damage total which is an average of 9.03...% each, thus diminishing returns. If the unit had 100 such criticals it still would not have a 100% critical strike chance so in such a case it would be less than 1% damage each critical.

 

[Karzama]

Ahh I thought they would work as in rolling multiple times. I've been making items have custom abilities that roll multiple times if you have more than one (but can proc all at once).

One hero has a 100% crit ability versus mechanical (so it gives it bonus dmg vs mech). Is it possible for the item crits to overwrite this or not? If not I'll try using Demolish but that didn't work last time I tried (or i couldn't tell it worked).

Do you have any idea how the other abilities work? I have Hardened Skin on a chance to reduce damage so I thought that might also just roll for every item (but only proc-ing once per attack).

 

[Dr Super Good]

Is it possible for the item crits to overwrite this or not?

I think they do by default, if not then simply dropping and picking the item up should work as I recall it is the last obtained critical that gets rolled first.

Do you have any idea how the other abilities work? I have Hardened Skin on a chance to reduce damage so I thought that might also just roll for every item (but only proc-ing once per attack).

No, sorry. I was hoping someone else could enlighten you on them but it seems that less and less people help out with WC3 sadly. I can only recommend running some experiments of your own (damage event with a pre-placed unit and giving it many hacked in sources with known damage amounts being dealt). Please post the results as I might be able to forward them to people asking similar questions in the future and actually I am quite curious of the behaviour.

On a little note, critical strike text did not seem to obey the rules I mentioned above if I recall. This is why so many people (even myself) were confused at some stage about it. It seems to proc separately for each critical source so multiple critical text can be generated from the same attack however only the first generated one will proc the bonus damge with the rest being ignored. One could also look at it programmatically saying only the last one procs but that overwrites any earlier ones (why it is the last added source that takes priority).

Also for note Evasion does not stack at all. The maximum is always used and it is rounded to the nearest 5% or something. 100% evasion is possible.

 

[Karzama]

Hmm... Well the 100% crit from the ability is generally better than the item crits (but can only hit mech). I purely used 100% crit to actually show numbers which looks better in my opinion.

I will have a look into Hardened Skin and Spiked Shell (the latter being more important). Not sure how I'll do it but I'll give it a go. If I am correct damage returned by Spiked Shell ignores any armor types or values as that's always been an issue but I can't sort that.

I already knew that Evasion couldn't stack as I thought it just used the highest value instead. Having 100% Evasion would be a bit much anyway... Thanks for the help so far