Mistwalker not triggering on Critical Strike with mines.

I'm playing a Hexblast miner. Mistwalker explicitly says "Gain Elusive on Critical Strike". Nothing about "you" in there that would suggest mines etc don't work or that you, yourself, must be responsible for the critical strike. Just "on Critical Strike".

Please tell me this is a bug... I spent a fortune on these damn gems after trying to be careful not to fall into something like this.


I'm guessing this is another example of the split between newer rigid/defined terminology and completely loose historical wording that's open to anyone's interpretation... *sigh*.

Interpreting it that loosely, you could argue that you shot gain Elusive when monsters land a Critical Strike on you, because the modifier doesn't state that you have to be responsible for the Critical Strike.



You did not crit. Your mine crit. So, in theory, it would be your mine getting Elusive on crit.

For similar reasoning, you do not leech life/mana/es from trap/mine damage (unless the modifier specifies "damage from traps" or "damage from mines" or the like), and damage from traps/mines gets reflected to the trap/mine instead of to the player.

The same for totems and minions as well. You don't crit in these cases, they do.

On the flipside, it also means you massively benefit from anything with a "if you haven't crit recently" or "if you haven't killed recently" tag. Those lab enchanted boots that give ele pen, 120% crit chance, etc. if you haven't done those things are on 100% of the time.

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Jadian wrote:

Interpreting it that loosely, you could argue that you shot gain Elusive when monsters land a Critical Strike on you, because the modifier doesn't state that you have to be responsible for the Critical Strike.

You did not crit. Your mine crit. So, in theory, it would be your mine getting Elusive on crit.

You're making an argument by absurdity. Nothing in the passive tree is from the perspective of monsters... everything is centered around the player and their mechanics/creations.

I'm making a carefully-delineated point because GGG is careful about its language. It's not a loose interpretation at all... GGG's typical language uses "you" in the description of something to mean you must initiate the action, excluding mines/totems/traps/minions, which you obviously know. There is no "you" here, so it suggests it may be more open.

I understand those limitations and am asking that this language be updated to indicate clearly that mines/totems/traps/minions won't work. It cost me 3 divines to find this out and I'm a little frosty about it, so I'd like them to hold to their own standards as they have in many patches in the past, standardizing language so it shoulders most of the burden and they don't have to personally update the wiki.

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bcbigb wrote:

...I'd like them to hold to their own standards as they have in many patches in the past, standardizing language so it shoulders most of the burden and they don't have to personally update the wiki.

Meanwhile, the standardized language:


Check - a stat work with proxies (non-self use)
Cross - a stat won't work for your character with proxies

This is about understanding for the most part. You/your doesn't indicate you think it does.

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bcbigb wrote:

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Jadian wrote:

Interpreting it that loosely, you could argue that you shot gain Elusive when monsters land a Critical Strike on you, because the modifier doesn't state that you have to be responsible for the Critical Strike.

You did not crit. Your mine crit. So, in theory, it would be your mine getting Elusive on crit.

You're making an argument by absurdity. Nothing in the passive tree is from the perspective of monsters... everything is centered around the player and their mechanics/creations.

I'm making a carefully-delineated point because GGG is careful about its language. It's not a loose interpretation at all... GGG's typical language uses "you" in the description of something to mean you must initiate the action, excluding mines/totems/traps/minions, which you obviously know. There is no "you" here, so it suggests it may be more open.

I understand those limitations and am asking that this language be updated to indicate clearly that mines/totems/traps/minions won't work. It cost me 3 divines to find this out and I'm a little frosty about it, so I'd like them to hold to their own standards as they have in many patches in the past, standardizing language so it shoulders most of the burden and they don't have to personally update the wiki.

My argument was indeed absurd, and illustrated that some things are implied even if not explicitly stated.

Passives and modifiers are centered around the player and their mechanics. They are not about the player's creations, unless they specify the player's creations. Creations likes traps, mines, and totems use skills based on your stats, but are their own entities.

This is also why "Curse on Hit" effects applied by traps/mines now expire shortly after being applied. It does just say "on Hit" without specifying the player's hits, but the trap/mine/totem is responsible for the hit, and Curses now expire when the thing that applied them dies.

You are not the beneficiary for "on Hit" or "on Critical Strike" effects if you do not hit or crit yourself.

"You can apply an additional Curse" effects specify "You", and yet these effects also apply to traps/mines/totems you create.
Call of the Void says "Enemies Chilled by your Hits can be Shattered as though Frozen", and this also applies for enemies chilled by trap/mine/totem hits with the ring equipped, despite saying "your".

You guys are missing the fundamental point, which is that whether the language is or isn't clear right now, it's supposed to be getting clearer as time goes on.

While I think sometimes it can be fun to find obscure interactions, you should have some hint they might work based on the rules (language) you know. If you get annoyed at the rigidity of "increased/decreased" when it *doesn't* work for you, you should at least understand my point about how this suggests it *should* work for you and why I'd be frustrated at having spent a lot of currency to find out it doesn't.


Jadian: Maybe your point about the Critical Strikes not being delivered is valid enough by the base logic, but you act with the false courage of 20/20 hindsight, i.e. "I knew this would never work" when there are many interactions that don't line up with your own logic, the game's "rules", etc.

My build is a perfect example: Why does Hexblast apply curses on hit, if you don't hit but the mines do? It's probably some programming quirk that they may or may not let live, but that's exactly the point. Programming quirks may work for or against you, but the point of the game is NOT to play against the programmers, but to play against the rules and "win". This is an engineering puzzle at heart... when it breaks down due to poor boundaries/definitions/whatever it becomes a trial and error snoozefest where we all just wait until no-lifers/streamers try something that shouldn't work but does, probably by mistake, and then we all pile in. The game is a build simulator at heart, NOT a loot game, and the rules are the intricate puzzle you're trying to solve that makes the game fun, so they need to be as clear as reasonably possible, documented in the wiki where the language in the game isn't capable of conveying enough information.


What's worse is it makes everyone angry with GGG later when the designers often decide it wasn't intentional and remove it, making for yet more "do as we say [rules/language], not as we do [interesting workarounds/quirks, bugs or not]" and decrease build diversity in players' eyes when not all mistakes are bad ones and should be left alone. But again, whether these mistakes work out or not, they need to be documented and ideally able to be logically worked out by the logic (language) of the game.

While the wiki tries to keep up with these quirks, there are no 100% clear delineations between what *does and doesn't* "carry forward" when you discuss mines/traps/totems. I have lists of interactions that the wiki is largely full of now, yet there are more I have that no one has recorded.


The overarching point, again, is that there are always these exceptions, for better or worse, and I'm simply asking them to clean up the language to reflect this (or perhaps the wiki if the language isn't that clear). I don't understand why anyone (Jadian, here) would argue with that as I'd bet you've been burned by this lack of clarity as well. It hurts the experience and makes the players feel somewhere between annoyed, baited, and cheated depending on how much time they invested into it.

If they didn't care about the language, they wouldn't be such hardasses about it, pointing to it when things don't work as someone thinks. If they're going to do so, then fair enough, we should be doing so as well in the other direction to ask for more clarity. If you get a ticket for a stop sign that was obscured by a huge bush not properly trimmed back by the city, they should trim the bush and not be able to give you a ticket. If you're going to accept the rules as rigid and valid enough you'll live by them, you need to put backpressure on them to be properly defined. If someone's the type who just says "acceptance is key to happiness, young monk" then that's perfectly fine to do on your own, but that won't improve the general situation.

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MonaHuna wrote:

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bcbigb wrote:

...I'd like them to hold to their own standards as they have in many patches in the past, standardizing language so it shoulders most of the burden and they don't have to personally update the wiki.

Meanwhile, the standardized language:


Check - a stat work with proxies (non-self use)
Cross - a stat won't work for your character with proxies

This is about understanding for the most part. You/your doesn't indicate you think it does.

I completely agree with your general point that it's a mess, but I'm trying to fix it, as I think it is part of a low-level chronic issue that's working against the most fundamental fun aspect of the game (as referenced previously, it's a build simulator and builds are a victory of working through complex rules) and I think it's much more serious than most would think. It's perceptually small enough to be really pernicious, so it's not prioritized but I think it needs to be pushed up a bit.

I get that everyone has other things to do, and making new content is understandably going to be more important than this issue, but I think GGG does realize that the language is the rules between them and us because they go to it just as a judge goes to the text of a law to resolve finer points.


On your specific point: I've seen "you" pointed at before as a critical term in multiple discussions, I believe by GGG or others quoting them, as a reason why players should have been more careful (again, implying we should be reading the rules/language when it's not clear). I believe that while it's not defined as clearly as "increased/decreased" and "more/less", it's used many times to specify self-cast (despite the odd/inconsistent "carry forward" issues you outlined well.

Did you just mark up that image from a screenshot of the trade website? I'm a little curious if anyone has outlined the mines/traps/totems quirks more "graphically".

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bcbigb wrote:

My build is a perfect example: Why does Hexblast apply curses on hit, if you don't hit but the mines do? It's probably some programming quirk that they may or may not let live, but that's exactly the point.

Mines perform their skill using your offensive stats.

"Curse on hit" is an offensive stat they can use. "Curse enemies with socketed hex curse gem on hit" is an offensive stat they try to use, but they inherit the stat without also inheriting the gem, so it does nothing when the mine hits.



What burns me the most is forgetting things. There may have been a few esoteric situations where I couldn't tell if things worked together...but I can't remember them, and they probably wouldn't have been clear without several paragraphs describing the interaction because when I don't understand something my brain can be stubborn about refusing to understand it.

If there are more things you're wondering about regarding how mines/etc. work with certain modifiers, feel free to ask, and people here will answer to the best of our abilities. I might come off as mean/annoying/arrogant, but that really isn't my intention, and I can just be bad at explaining things.



If general:

Mines inherit your combat stats, and use their skill as though they were "you". Things "you" cause to the enemy are caused by the mine, and things "you" receive from hitting or critting the enemy apply to the mine.

Some of these things do nothing as a result: mines cannot gain or lose Power Charges, for example, because mines use your stats (such as number of Power Charges) for their effect.

I'm not sure if mines would receive Elusive from Mistwalker, given that it might allow the mine to avoid damage if the mine is reusable and thus rearms, which was why I said "in theory" before. I don't think it's something that can be trivially checked.



The importance of "you" might depend on the context of what was being discussed. When it comes to self-cast, I think "cast" or "you've cast" tends to be an important keyword for that, in terms of "the spell was not triggered, or otherwise automatically used".