Co-posted in Bug report Forums. I was messing around today, going through the protoss tech tree with a friend to better help him understand the general protoss tech tree, when we came across this bug.
The Barrier is supposed to absorb the first instance of damage up to 100 shields. If the barrier absorbs more damage than that, it’s supposed to break and transfer to the shields underneath.
This isn’t actually the case - instead, the barrier breaks and any damage remaining is simply ignored - see the following:
https://gyazo.com/b5b5829c6b3e3fd6fdbbe27a668c3919
The gif above shows what I’m talking about.
The disruptor procs the immortal’s Barrier (145 damage + 55 to shields for a total of 200 damage) however it ignores the remaining 100 damage on breaking the barrier.
For reference, the damage is supposed to be counted towards the 100 damage that the barrier absorbs, as stated in the patch notes here:
Immortal
- Barrier will now also block the first instance of damage which triggers the Barrier.
Community Council Comment: Counts towards the 100 damage blocked by the Barrier.
Currently EMP hitting an Immortal will drain all of the Immortal’s shields as well as activating the Barrier, which will generally expire before the Immortal ends up receiving other damage, making the ability lose value in the mid game against Terran.
Edit: Following further testing, the bug currently effects the following units, resulting in significant wasted damage:
Widow mine (100% of damage absorbed, 70 damage wasted)
Yamato (100% of damage absorbed, 140 damage wasted)
Siege tank (1st damage absorbed, 2nd shot breaks barrier and wastes the remaining 40 damage)
https://gyazo.com/1cc714fbd3e71b60d5566f803a841bf3
Liberators (1st damage absorbed, 2nd shot breaks barrier and wastes the remaining 50 damage)
https://gyazo.com/ba993406233cb42a5bd9597489cbe2eb
Tempests (1st 2 shots damage absorbed, 3nd shot breaks barrier and wastes the remaining 20 damage)
https://gyazo.com/04e235a369948fdb0fd833e9f214d06a
Thors (1st attack damage absorbed, 2nd shot breaks barrier and wastes the remaining 20 damage)
https://gyazo.com/808b568babffc31ed902623eb170a4da
Ravager Bile: (1st shot absorbed, 2nd shot breaks barrier and wastes the remaining 20 damage)
https://gyazo.com/28206b1af6c10fe2f57d434e32257399
- Effectively, any high damage unit in the game will be particularly effected by this change, but theoretically it could also effect smaller units such as marines - however high dps low damage units apply damage fast enough that this almost wouldn’t matter.
When the barrier breaks, any remaining damage is nullified regardless of whether it’s the first instance of damage, instead of overflowing to the immortal’s shields underneath.
Edit 2: even further testing -
The bug only seems to occur on friendly units, so breath a sigh of relief Protoss players!