Battle buffs mechanics and mercs questions.

[DMDM]

1.How are the battle buffs calculated ? I mean do you get the bonus calculated per class? Let me explain.  I have a light mage mercenary that has "Vision of clarity" and "Fountain of Life". When my tank (warrior) gets buffed he gets 20 dexterity, 20 vitality and 300 hit points. When I get buffed, and I'm a ranger, I get 20 dexterity, 20 vitality and 200 hit points. Now which buffs aren't correctly applied ? ? My buffs or my warrior's ?

2.How does taunt work ? Does the merc tries to taunt all enemies as long it has spirit and not all enemies are attacking him ? Or the number of taunts he performs each battle is limited ? I'm asking because in at least one occasion he had spirit and I had one of the opponents hitting me, as a ranger, in 5th turn or such and the warrior wasn't taunting anymore.

3. I understood that your mercs do get levels as they fight along you. What happens when they level up ? The attribute points get randomly distributed ? And more important, what happens to the skill points ? Do they get any ? If they do get skill points, those are thrown randomly or do they improve their already picked skills ?

4.Can you miss with special attacks ? Can they crit ? By special attacks I mean retaliate, shield bash and counterattack.

5.And finally is the bolded part normal ? . If is normal what exactly can it explain it. It is from someone else's combat log and it occurred quite often. The Merc was a defense warrior,  I think, and the player was a Dark Mage.


------------Round 5----------------

******* uses Heal on  Merc
Steppe warrior Block *******
Merc Hits [-378] Steppe warrior
Steppe warrior fail to hit *******
Steppe warrior fail to hit Merc
Steppe warrior fail to hit *******
Steppe warrior fail to hit *******
Steppe warrior - Archer Hits [-19] Merc
******* Block Steppe warrior - Archer
******* Hits [-302] Steppe warrior - Archer
******* Block Steppe warrior - Archer
Steppe warrior - Archer Hits [-977] Steppe warrior - Archer
Steppe warrior - Archer Hits [-19] Merc

I "obscured" the players name.

[Crassus]

1. for you 20 Vitality is 200 life but for warrior is 20*10*1,5=300 life. So is normal.

3. It is here http://forum.imperialhero.org/int/index.php?topic=3375.0 are too many to repost them, sorry for the redirection.

5. Probably is a text bug... except if the merc's name was the same as the enemy's... I think that a bug like this have been report before...

[Cuorion]

1) As Crassus said, For warrior classes the class attributes are strength and vitality. Every bonus applied to them is multiplied x1.5. This means that when your merc gives you +20 vitality, the same buff will give your warrior merc 1.5 times that much, in other words 30. Since each point gives +10 HP, you get +200 HP and your warrior merc gets +300.

2) It's kind like every other "active" skill that consumes spirit. There is a chance that it is cast in each turn, but it may not. It picks a random enemy and it can even be resisted. So it is kind of normal that you (or another merc of yours) get hit after a number of turns.

3) When you hire I merc you may have noticed that some of their attributes equal their level and some other equal their level multiplied by a number (multiplier). Let's say your warrior merc is level 35 and has 105 Strength, 140 Vitality, 35 Dexterity, 35 Agility and 35 Inteligence. Notice that the strength multiplier is x3 and the vitality multiplier is x4. When he levels up, he will gain 3 strength, 4 vitality and 1 to each of the rest. Their skill points are (sadly) static, which means your merc will keep the skills and levels he got when you hired him no matter how many times he leveled up under your employment.

4) Unfortunately I cannot answer this one. Since I prefer passive bonuses and buff skills, neither me nor my mercs have any aggresive special attacks.

5) I guess it is a visual bug. We'd definitely need more information on the matter to make more accurate speculations, however it does look wierd.

[Crassus]

4.Can you miss with special attacks ? Can they crit ? By special attacks I mean retaliate, shield bash and counterattack.

4) Unfortunately I cannot answer this one. Since I prefer passive bonuses and buff skills, neither me nor my mercs have any aggresive special attacks.

4. After some test i never missed a special attack. But the special attacks was mystic spells (Sickness & weakness). Also i tried ranger's flame arrow. If by special attack you mean for example shield bash then i am not sure but since have chance... I guess that if you manage to perform it then it will not miss. But if you consider taunt as special attack then yes have chance to miss, after all it is clear-> higher level less chance to resisted.

2. I have two mercs with taunt. They use taunt at every enemy (in enemy's turn)  who have choose to attack other member of your party. When they are dead or out of spirit or they have failed using this skill at an enemy then they are not using again...

Team 2 takes turn
Vicious Robber selected Crassus , Slave_XII tries to use Taunt skill.
Vicious Robber selected Crassus , Slave_XII tries to use Taunt skill.
Vicious Robber selected Crassus , Slave_XII tries to use Taunt skill.
Vicious Robber selected Crassus , Slave_XIII tries to use Taunt skill.
Vicious Robber doesn't have an opponent, therefore he chooses Crassus. Level difference modifier is 0.6 .
Crassus's block percentage is 50.
Critical Hit Chance: 0
Vicious Robber tries to use the skill Ambush that adds 10% to his Critical Hit Chance.
Guardian Stance stance reduces damage taken, which is 37.95 with 7.59.
Damage redused from 30.36 with 14
Vicious Robber hits Crassus for 16.36 and the latter is left with 3131.24 health.
Vicious Robber - Archer 24.8/50 Block successful.
Round 3

Team 2 takes turn
Vicious Robber 29.93/50 Block successful.
Vicious Robber - Archer hits Slave_XII for 56.275 and the latter is left with 737.02 health.
Vicious Robber has been defeated!


As we see here they stop using taunt skill when they failed to taunt the enemy...(Block is performed by Crassus)
And they stop using taunt skill when it has been successful to an enemy.
It is like mystic's weakness & sickness they are performed one's to every enemy have select other team member to attack.


ps. I have not answered those 2 questions coz i wanted to test them before...

[DMDM]

1. Maybe I wasn't clear when I asked the question. It's clear why my warrior merc got buffed for 300 hp. Strength and vitality worth 1.5 per point for a warrior. My question was why I didn't get buffed for 1.5 Vision of Clarity hence 20 x 1.5 Dexterity = 30 , since I'm a ranger. And you can't see the crit rate after the buff so you can't see if the "effect" of the buff is 1.5 (3% crit instead of 2%), just like 300 hp is the 1.5x "effect" of the 20 vitality applied on the warrior.
2. My best guess as far as Taunt goes is that the merc will try and taunt each mob until it is either applied or the number of tries reaches the skill (i.e. Taunt 4= 4 tries). And it will try each mob only for one turn. If it failed 4 times then it will skip to next mob next turn and the "failed" mob will pick a target on its own or remain on its target.
3. Too bad the merc won't get skill points when leveling up. But if that's how it works then, oh well, that's how it works.
4. My tank was hitting with counterattack[0] at times. That's why I'm asking. That's either bugged or is a visual of counterattack missing. It can't be armor mitigation because he hit the same mob with around 100 when it was successful.
5. It's good enough answer that is not normal. That's what I thought. It looked highly awkward to me that's why I posted it. I'll post more on that subject if I see it occurring again.

[Cuorion]

Since all other questions seem to have been answered sufficiently, let me post some test results regarding the first one.

What made you post this question is the first place was probably something like the following (spot the red arrows).



Your question is that "since my ranger is gets x1.5 bonus of dexterity, that 6 up there should be a 9". Then you probably searched the battle report to see if it is a visual issue and saw something like this.



Regarding given bonuses (chance to hit/critical (if not capped already), it actually is a 9. The battle visualization and report show the buff's effects to, let's call them, visualized stats (the 5 base attributes, life and spirit). What you see is what the buff generally gives. What the caster "intented" to give. And that was 6 Dexterity.

It is a bit different than what you saw on your warrior merc. That looked something like this.



...and the battle report also stated the following.



In the visualization you see that the buff itself mentions a raise of the warrior's vitality by 6, not 9 (same principle as before). That buff though triggered a change in one of the visualized stats (health in our case). So the battle visualization and report showed this result too (hence the +90 Health row).

[DMDM]

Thought so. Good answers from everyone. Many thanks.