Applying multiple tokens of the same type actually are bugged

[zelgadis]

Why does applying the negative tokens pass the resist debuff check only once? For example, applying 1 weakness and 1 vulnerability will pass two checks, a weakness resist check and a vulnerability resist check, one token can be applied, the other does not. But if you cast two weakness tokens, the check passes only once, and if it fails, both weakness tokens are discarded. In my opinion, the developers wanted to release the game so quickly that they don’t even pay attention to how the invented mechanics work at all. If you say that this is how it should be, then this is not so, because then in the described example, the check should also pass only once. In addition, this is a counterintuitive idea in principle, the meaning of overlapping two tokens of the same type is needed not so much for the "strength" of the effect, but to increase the chance for aplly tokens, which of course does not happen.

[Grimwulf]

Originally posted by zelgadis:

the meaning of overlapping two tokens of the same type is needed not so much for the "strength" of the effect, but to increase the chance for aplly tokens, which of course does not happen.

It is, in fact, a "strength of the effect", or rather duration.

When I hit a blight attack, it checks for enemy blight resist once. Then it either applies blight for 3 turns, or doesn't apply it at all. It doesn't make three separate checks for each turn of blight. Same logic works for debuff tokens.

[Pixel Peeper]

It's probably to make the RNG more swingy. Two checks would mean you'd often get one token on the target, which would make it more reliable.

The devs detest reliability, they want extremes. Either you put two or none.

[squat_instructor]

It works the same if you remove positive tokens from enemies, if successful you will remove all tokens of a kind with one check. As far as I am concerned it is working as intended and makes perfect sense

[zelgadis]

Originally posted by Grimwulf:

Originally posted by zelgadis:

the meaning of overlapping two tokens of the same type is needed not so much for the "strength" of the effect, but to increase the chance for aplly tokens, which of course does not happen.

It is, in fact, a "strength of the effect", or rather duration.

When I hit a blight attack, it checks for enemy blight resist once. Then it either applies blight for 3 turns, or doesn't apply it at all. It doesn't make three separate checks for each turn of blight. Same logic works for debuff tokens.

I don't think comparing dots and tokens is a good example, but let's compare.
Dots are just damage, the more the better, and the application logic is simple - the sooner the better. There are no tricks. Skills with dots almost always have no cooldown, it resisted on this turn, use it on the next. Skills that apply negative tokens most often have a cooldown, if the enemy resisted them, you will not be able to try again on the next turn. In other words, each negative token has its own value, and applying one 1 weakness before the enemy's strong attack is more valuable than just applying 2 weakness on the first turn. And this is the main difference from dots. 1 blight on an enemy is never better than 2, 5 or 10.
Your example fits better in DD1, where indeed debuffs and dots had a common mechanic, debuffs were applied for 3 turns, they worked all this time, and they... could stack, -20% damage and -20% damage gave -40% damage . In such a situation, I would agree with you that 2 weaknesses should pass one check, although, as I said, 1 weakness and 1 vulnerability should also pass one check if they come from the same skill.
But in DD2, debuffs were replaced by tokens, and we come to a situation in which the developer says "1 weakness and 1 vulnerability should pass different checks, not one, because these are tokens, not debuffs." But in another situation, he says "2 weaknesses must pass one check, two identical tokens are... like a debuff."
Thus, either tokens must work according to the algorithm "each token passes its own check", or "tokens work by analogy with debuffs from DD1". In the second case, the tokens must stack and 2 blinds must give a 100% miss chance. Which of course would be catastrophic, so I would like the tokens to work according to the first case.

[Grimwulf]

Originally posted by zelgadis:

I don't think comparing dots and tokens is a good example, but let's compare.
Dots are just damage, the more the better, and the application logic is simple - the sooner the better. There are no tricks. Skills with dots almost always have no cooldown, it resisted on this turn, use it on the next. Skills that apply negative tokens most often have a cooldown, if the enemy resisted them, you will not be able to try again on the next turn. In other words, each negative token has its own value, and applying one 1 weakness before the enemy's strong attack is more valuable than just applying 2 weakness on the first turn. And this is the main difference from dots. 1 blight on an enemy is never better than 2, 5 or 10.
Your example fits better in DD1, where indeed debuffs and dots had a common mechanic, debuffs were applied for 3 turns, they worked all this time, and they... could stack, -20% damage and -20% damage gave -40% damage . In such a situation, I would agree with you that 2 weaknesses should pass one check, although, as I said, 1 weakness and 1 vulnerability should also pass one check if they come from the same skill.
But in DD2, debuffs were replaced by tokens, and we come to a situation in which the developer says "1 weakness and 1 vulnerability should pass different checks, not one, because these are tokens, not debuffs." But in another situation, he says "2 weaknesses must pass one check, two identical tokens are... like a debuff."
Thus, either tokens must work according to the algorithm "each token passes its own check", or "tokens work by analogy with debuffs from DD1". In the second case, the tokens must stack and 2 blinds must give a 100% miss chance. Which of course would be catastrophic, so I would like the tokens to work according to the first case.

That's a lot of words, but you still don't make a good point. It all comes down to "I'd like it to work differently, because that's my personal preference" - it's not a valid argument to slap a "bug" label.

If a skill applies double vulnerable token, why should those vulnerable tokens have different resistance checks? It's a debuff that came from the same source. Your opponent needs to generate 2 blocks to overcome this condition, or suffer additional damage from the next two attacks.

Runaway's Smokescreen is already overpowered. You throw a combo, double blind, and a vuln token on top. Combo will always stick. Two debuff res checks will make at least one more debuff stick. And you're saying that there should be *three* debuff res checks? Naah, this is beyond unreasonable.

However. There are certain situations when the game works like you want - it's not a "bug", it's just a different mechanic.

For example, Pristine Lure trinket might apply a single Taunt token, or double Taunt tokens. In this case, the description tells you that it's a 50% chance to apply a single token, and a 25% chance to apply double.

Same with buffs - cetain skills might apply a single buff or a double buff, e.g. Stealth tokens from Altar of Denial or Taunt tokens from Altar of Obsession. When it does that, the game tells you that it's 75% for a single Taunt token, or 25% for double Taunt token. Different mechanic, as I mentioned.

But let's say some modder will step up and rework this according to your preference. Now how is Bellow or Weakening Curse supposed to work when it comes to removing crit tokens? Separate check for each token? What are we even checking against btw? Same goes for Highway Robbery, Confessor's Illumination and god knows what else.

And what about Seething Sigh's Blind Rage - will it check our debuff res twice now, for each Blind separately? Come on now. This game is too easy as it is, no need to make it trivial.

[zelgadis]

Originally posted by Grimwulf:

That's a lot of words, but you still don't make a good point. It all comes down to "I'd like it to work differently, because that's my personal preference" - it's not a valid argument to slap a "bug" label.

If a skill applies double vulnerable token, why should those vulnerable tokens have different resistance checks? It's a debuff that came from the same source. Your opponent needs to generate 2 blocks to overcome this condition, or suffer additional damage from the next two attacks.

Runaway's Smokescreen is already overpowered. You throw a combo, double blind, and a vuln token on top. Combo will always stick. Two debuff res checks will make at least one more debuff stick. And you're saying that there should be *three* debuff res checks? Naah, this is beyond unreasonable.

However. There are certain situations when the game works like you want - it's not a "bug", it's just a different mechanic.

For example, Pristine Lure trinket might apply a single Taunt token, or double Taunt tokens. In this case, the description tells you that it's a 50% chance to apply a single token, and a 25% chance to apply double.

Same with buffs - cetain skills might apply a single buff or a double buff, e.g. Stealth tokens from Altar of Denial or Taunt tokens from Altar of Obsession. When it does that, the game tells you that it's 75% for a single Taunt token, or 25% for double Taunt token. Different mechanic, as I mentioned.

But let's say some modder will step up and rework this according to your preference. Now how is Bellow or Weakening Curse supposed to work when it comes to removing crit tokens? Separate check for each token? What are we even checking against btw? Same goes for Highway Robbery, Confessor's Illumination and god knows what else.

And what about Seething Sigh's Blind Rage - will it check our debuff res twice now, for each Blind separately? Come on now. This game is too easy as it is, no need to make it trivial.

it seemed to me that I conveyed the idea that "apply 2 weaknesses" should not work as a single effect, but as "apply 1 vulnerability, apply 1 vulnerability" by analogy with "apply 1 vulnerability, apply 1 weakness" counts as two effects and has two checks.
I've made some mods for DD2 and that's why I'm asking this question about tokens. In fairness, I will note that I went through the game honestly, and only then became interested in how the game works.

Are you asking "If a skill applies double vulnerable token, why should those vulnerable tokens have different resistance checks?" And my answer is simple, because using the skill that apply two different tokens, two checks occur. If we go down to the code and see how the skills work, then we can notice that it is not the debuff or tokens that resist, but the effect itself.
If a skill has multiple effects, for example "apply 1 vulnerability, apply 1 weakness", then each of them will pass a separate check, and this is my question:
Why wasn't a rule described that would check the number of tokens inside the effect when checking resistance, or why didn't they use "apply 1 vulnerability, apply 1 vulnerability" instead of "apply 2 vulnerabilities"?

I don't quite understand why you think extra checks "make the game easier", because in fact it will even make the game harder. The probability of the event "apply 1 vulnerability + apply 1 vulnerability" is lower than the probability of the event "apply 2 vulnerabilities", but a new event "apply at least 1 vulnerability out of two" appears, the probability of which is quite high. This makes effects with the overlap of two tokens of the same type especially valuable, but their full effect is more difficult to obtain.
About Bellow or Weakening Curse, their token removal effect works quite logically, because getting a positive token is easier than applying a negative one, positive tokens cant be resisted.
Seething Sigh's Blind Rage - There's nothing to stop you from creating exceptions for bosses or mini-bosses, but I'm talking about the basic mechanics.

[Pixel Peeper]

Originally posted by zelgadis:

I don't quite understand why you think extra checks "make the game easier", because in fact it will even make the game harder. The probability of the event "apply 1 vulnerability + apply 1 vulnerability" is lower than the probability of the event "apply 2 vulnerabilities", but a new event "apply at least 1 vulnerability out of two" appears, the probability of which is quite high. This makes effects with the overlap of two tokens of the same type especially valuable, but their full effect is more difficult to obtain.

See, that's what's interesting.

In this game, what kills you is bad luck, in particular multiple pieces of bad luck striking together or in quick succession. The devs know this. That's why they try to trick players into taking chances by offering them "good" gambles. Most of the time those gambles pay off... but the catch is, you don't need that payoff. Sure, it makes things easier, but you don't need to win more. What you need is to not lose. And when you gamble, even if they're "good" gambles, sooner or later multiple gambles will fail at the wrong time, and that's when you lose.

Take these two fictional skills:

Skill1: 90% chance to apply two Vulnerable, 10% chance to do nothing.
Skill2: 100% chance to apply one Vulnerable.

Question: which skill is better?

Answer: it's Skill2. By a lot. People don't get this, but it's true.

I think that having separate checks for the Vulnerability tokens would be a massive buff. Sure, it'll be much harder to get both Vulnerable tokens, but that's totally acceptable. What's important is that it greatly reduces the odds that the ability will do nothing. That's what you need to avoid.

That's why I think they implemented it this way. It's just another gamble. It could have worked differently but they make arbitrary choices like that.

I like that people like you wonder about these things, though. I sometimes ask myself weird questions like that, too. For example, I once wondered why only one Dodge token is checked when the target is attacked. In a parallel universe, there's a version of this game where an attack tests the first Dodge token, if the Dodge fails then the second Dodge token is tested, and if that one fails too then the third one is tested. That makes someone with multiple Dodge tokens very hard to hit, with the cost that an enemy attack could sometimes consume more than one Dodge token.

But they went with only one Dodge token being tested. Also arbitrary, but In this case I think it's because they wanted to keep the math simple.

[Grimwulf]

Pixel Peeper is right, and this is most definitely not a bug.

DD2 has greater mysteries by far. Having a 2x weakness skill pass one debuff res check - that makes sense at least. But there are skills that apply self-debuff upon use, some of which can be resisted, while others cannot.

Self-daze from Pirouette - can be resisted
Self-daze from Encore - can't be resisted

Self-DoT follow the same inconsistent logic:
Self-burn from being an Arsonist - can be resisted
Self-brun from Unchecked Power - can't be resisted

[zelgadis]

Originally posted by Grimwulf:

Self-daze from Pirouette - can be resisted
Self-daze from Encore - can't be resisted

Self-DoT follow the same inconsistent logic:
Self-burn from being an Arsonist - can be resisted
Self-brun from Unchecked Power - can't be resisted

most likely this is a kind of balancing of "strong" skills, but I was also confused. It would be easier to understand if some self-debuffs, for example, would always ignore resistance, but have a chance of apply, or if there was some kind of icon that means "ignores resistance".
I remembered another mystery, it is not entirely obvious, if you take a Plague Doctor and take one +2 blight trinket, and the second with a chance to apply 1 blight, then when using Noxius Blast there will be not 8 poisons with a chance to add 1, but 8 with a chance to add 3.

thanks to all who replied, i got satisfaction from reasoning how it should work, i was frustrated trying to figure out why some tokens are split into multiple effects and some are merged, but it looks like the answer is simple - it's a gamble, apply 2 blinds, or apply 0 causes more powerful ones emotions than if you know that 1 will almost always apply. But it would be nice if in the future will be trinkets something like "skills cannot impose two tokens of the same type, instead there are two checks for such a token" or "ignores the resist, but applies one token from the skill".

[Pixel Peeper]

This new Steam client is driving me nuts. It keeps telling me this post was updated when it wasn't. I unsubscribed but am still getting notifications.

I'm posting in the hopes that it fixes it.

Edit: it did not. I'm going to get a notification about this thread every single day forever unless this horribly slow and buggy new Steam client is fixed.