Defensive mechanism resolution

[Finalgenesis]

Another question hit me as I was planning buffs, thanks in advance for any help!

For defensive abilities like luck, ethereal, blood vengeance, astral shield, fire shield, vine shield, awe, petrify ...etc what is the order they resolve in? For example, if I had a warlock cast blood vengeance, would casting luck also actually cut down the effectiveness of blood vengeance by 50%? E.g. if a unit attack and miss due to luck, it never moves onto the blood vengeance check phase. Or if I have an ethereal unit, do the ethereal miss check kick in before or after the a hit is made (so you get -2 def from the attack if the check is made after a hit).

Vaguely, I only know that vine shield, awe and blood vengeance, luck, petrify kicks in before the actual attack, but not the order they resolve in.

I have heard that ethereal kicks in after you are hit, so you would suffer the -2 def penalty, where luck kicks in before a hit is made and so if luck manage to turn an attack you do not suffer a -2 def penalty.

But if ethereal kicks in after a hit is made, then blood vengeance would work at 100%?

Also do some of them resolve at the same time? For example if fire shield + astral shield + blood vengeance all resolve in the same phase, then you can fire damage + paralyze + reflect damage check all at the same time? Or do they all resolve in a specific order?

The resolve order would be important for me to know which buffs to use and which would be wasted. For example if luck came before everything else then there may be specific case where I don't want it...

another random one: if you have mistform + mossbody on a unit, do the mossbody kick in after mistform decreases the damage (eg always 0 damage and mossbody never pops until mistform pops)? Or does mistform overwrites mossbody?...etc

Thanks in advance for any help on this matter.

[Gregstrom]

This is a top-notch question - I don't know all the answers to this, and I'd definitely like to find out.

IIRC (and take a pinch of salt with this): Luck, Awe and Ethereal take effect before the -2 defence is applied.

BV takes effect after damage is rolled, but before armour, resistances etc. are applied to the roll. I would expect this to include the mistform effect (but I haven't tested it).

[Squirrelloid]

I don't think anyone actually knows the full answer to this question. That means its time to engage in some SCIENCE!

...please report your results for the edification of the community. (come on, hop to).

[Verjigorm]

I have a tiny bit of experience with this in creating my "Blood Angel" pretender which has both Awe and Blood Vengeance.

Awe goes before "offensive" shielding as it prevents the target from attacking and an attack must be made before an offensive shield goes off. I do not know how it deals with things like vine traps, however.

Offensive shields being Blood Vengeance, Astral Shield, Fire Shield.

This is a theory, and untested: Luck and Ethereality cause "misses" and, if a unit misses, it does not activate an offensive shield, so basically I would say:

1. Things that prevent an attack from occurring.
2. Things that cause and attack to miss.
3. Things that retaliate against an attack.

Order of actions occurring within each category (e.g. order of Ethereality and Luck) are trivial and in some cases impossible to determine.

Blood Vengeance is only resolved if damage is done because it is a reflection attack (e.g. if you hurt me, you take the same amount of damage).

Hypothesis: Petrification is a "gaze" feature and most likely resolves in the same phase as Awe.

I have no clue when Vine Shield activates, but a shaky hypothesis would be that it activates in the same phase that Awe does.

[Finalgenesis]

The more I think about it the more confused I get. I'm not sure where to start in terms of testing it, maybe something simply like astral shield, fire shield and blood vengeance against low MR high HP unit. I may really have to try debug mode and that dom3xtest map looks useful.

Generally I suppose buffs falls under 2 categories, before hit and on hit. The problem is whether abilities of the same category all happen at the same time, which I doubt, ex if you have mirror image up + luck and ethereal, would a miss due to luck also use up a mirror check? I doubt it, there is probably a specific order to it, maybe a few of them do happen concurrently, astral + fire shield being top of my mind.

hmmm for activate on hit buffs, it would seem they get -2 defense penalty in that case, not always bad I suppose with something like blood vengeance where you want them to hit. I think debug log is a must to see what is happening.

I'll dig through the spell list and post a full list of defensive buff later, I'm sure I'll might some so don't be shy to add ones I missed. I'll then test out astral + fire + blood vengeance without debug (have to learn how to use it over weekend) and post my observations here.

[lch]

I'm fairly certain that Blood Vengeance only activates when actual damage has been dealt. Some things are on-hit-effects, some are on-strike effects, which would be what has been dubbed as "gaze feature" by Verjigorm, a strike (attempt) may be canceled by an ability such as Awe. You're best advised to make extensive use of the debug log.